


the life awake, whole

by ohdeariemegoodness



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other, Unethical Experimentation, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 00:55:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20300788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohdeariemegoodness/pseuds/ohdeariemegoodness
Summary: Optimus loses the war.





	the life awake, whole

**Author's Note:**

> Art by the fantastic [hopeamy](https://hopeamy03.tumblr.com/). Find her art on [tumblr](https://ariesnohope.tumblr.com/post/187104164373/my-art-based-on-spacecoats-awesome-writing) and on [twitter](https://twitter.com/Amapola318/status/1163208441671966720?s=20)!

  
You asked the part  
of me I kept hidden. It was every  
softness I didn’t give them,

the life awake,  
whole,  
trembling.

-Nomi Stone, “War Game”

* * *

Optimus lets go, and the ship’s wreckage settles with a groan, not even a full millimeter from its original position. He manually dismisses a structural stress notification from his systems, well aware that he is at the edge of his maximum force tolerance.

“How’s it coming, Optimus?” Ratchet doesn’t look up from his work on Wheeljack, who was prematurely ejected in the crash.

This was meant to be a quick mission, authorized after Megatron’s sudden and unexplained return to Cybertron: locate the Decepticons, find out what they’re up to, drop off supplies for the underground Autobot resistance cells still stationed on Cybertron, and then return to Earth. So far, their ship has been shot down, Arcee hasn’t been able to establish contact with Ultra Magnus _or_ Elita, and the one Decepticon they _have_ managed to locate is currently trapped unconscious under their ship.

“Not well,” Optimus says, dryly. “I can’t get Soundwave out from under the ship without destabilizing it. And I can’t get the ship moved without crushing him.”

After a solid hour of trying, it’s becoming clear to Optimus that if the ship _does_ move, it won’t be in the direction he wants it to.

“Could just leave him there,” Arcee points out, unconcerned.

Optimus sighs, then shakes his head. “I will not leave him trapped and suffering, even if he is our enemy,” he tells her.

“He’s not even _awake_,” she grumbles, under her breath. Optimus chooses not to grace that with a response.

“Let me get Wheeljack up, and I’ll take a look at it,” Ratchet says. After a few moments, he slaps Wheeljack’s chest plating back on, and then goes to stand by Optimus and stare down at Soundwave. Most of him is fine, if dented—but his arm is completely crushed, and inconveniently stuck beneath their wrecked ship.

Off to the side, Wheeljack finally sits up. “Thanks, Ratch,” he says, and stretches out a leg admiringly. “You even got my foot back on!”

“Had a spare ankle servo,” Ratchet tells him. “You lucked out. Unlike Soundwave here.”

“Do you think we could dig him out?” Optimus asks, without much hope.

“Not unless you’ve gotten mining equipment installed without informing me,” Ratchet snorts. “No, that arm is going to have to come off.”

“I wish we’d brought Ironhide,” Bumblebee says, coming up behind them.

Optimus wishes the same thing, and not just because his particular talents would be helpful right now. He doesn’t know what the Decepticons have done, but their ship was shot down as soon as they broke atmosphere by an unidentified automated system—an automated system which, apparently, Soundwave is unable to control. Optimus’s tactical coprocessor is identifying their most immediate need as _more backup_.

On the bright side, taking custody of Soundwave will even things out a little. As far as Optimus is aware, Megatron only brought a handful of staff with him when he returned to Cybertron—and without Soundwave to manage communications, he’s unlikely to be able to summon any backup, either.

“I’ll get started,” Ratchet says, dropping down beside Soundwave. He locates a port and starts prying it open.

“Do you need neural access?” Bumblebee asks, coming up beside them.

“I need to get him rebooted, first,” Ratchet explains. “But yes, if I can get it. I don’t have any Decepticon-grade pain suppressors on me at all, but I can manually reroute his—” he stops talking, staring down into the port he’s uncovered.

Optimus leans in to see, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. The port has been—_savaged_; there isn’t another word for it. The casing is cracked wide, and the metal contacts at the bottom are completely slagged, like someone has been at them with a spot welder.

“Ouch,” Bumblebee says.

“Back off,” Ratchet says. “How would you feel if someone was staring at _your_ ports while you were unconscious?”

Appropriately chastened, Bumblebee goes to stand beside Wheeljack and Arcee. Optimus looks away guiltily. Still—“Is the damage very recent?” Optimus asks. If an enemy exists on Cybertron with the power to do this to Soundwave, their situation is worse than he’d originally thought.

“No, it looks fairly well-established,” Ratchet assures him. “I’d say the most recent damage is six Cybertronian months old, at a minimum.” He moves on to a different access panel, but ends up closing that one, too. After a couple more tries he drops his plate lever with a growl.

“I don’t know the cause of this damage, or why Hook hasn’t rebuilt these ports, but they’re completely non-functional,” Ratchet says, angrily closing an access panel. “I can’t use any of them. At this point I’m betting that they’re all in this state.”

“Will you still be able to wake him?” Optimus asks.

“This arm has to come off, and I can’t reroute his pain processing without neural access,” Ratchet says, grimly. “So yes, I imagine he _will_ boot up, although it’d be better if he didn’t. Do me a favor and hold him down so he doesn’t destroy me when he does.”

Optimus nods and gets into place, positioning his weight strategically to keep Soundwave restrained without compounding his injuries. “Go ahead,” he says, unnecessarily; Ratchet is already easing up the ruin of Soundwave’s arm, to provide access to the socket.

As Ratchet predicted, Soundwave comes up fighting; his cannon starts powering up before his visor has even fully illuminated, and he immediately smashes his helm up into Optimus, throwing him off-balance, then attempts to roll over Ratchet. Optimus, head still ringing, manages to stop him before he crushes Ratchet, or brings the ship’s wreckage crashing down on all of them.

“At peace, Soundwave,” Optimus says urgently, using his greater bulk to keep Soundwave pinned to the ground. “Ratchet must remove your damaged arm, which is holding you trapped and in danger of immediate harm.”

“Do you have a functioning access port?” Ratchet asks, still working furiously. “I don’t currently have access to Decepticon-grade pain suppressor modules, but I can redirect your pain processing to keep it more manageable.”

“Negative,” Soundwave says, finally stilling. Optimus eases off of him, but keeps one hand on his uninjured shoulder in case of involuntary movement.

Ratchet doesn’t drag it out. Soundwave doesn’t react to the pain, but Optimus knows it must be excruciating; simply watching Ratchet pull away the sheared armor and then physically disconnect the interlinked shoulder servos has Optimus’s own systems generating false pain reports. When Ratchet goes to disconnect the tensor cable, though, Soundwave jerks away.

“Unnecessary,” he says, and the cable just—slithers out of the disconnected arm. Optimus resets his optics, then looks at Ratchet, who seems just as flabbergasted as he is.

“You can individually manipulate your tensor cables?” Ratchet asks.

Soundwave doesn’t respond, just sits up, using the tensor cable for leverage.

“Guess that answers that question,” Ratchet mutters, and starts getting his repair kit put up. “Okay, Optimus, I can probably salvage that arm if you can get it out.”

Optimus nods, and waits for Ratchet and Soundwave to get clear before wrestling the detached arm out from under the ship, a much easier process now that it’s no longer attached to a forty-eight ton Decepticon. He manages to get most of it out, although the armored plating on the forearm is completely scraped off. Storing the arm in his subspace, he turns around to see Soundwave walking away sedately, with Ratchet and Arcee following. Arcee already has an energy weapon powering up.

Optimus goes after them. “Soundwave!” he calls, hoping to prevent a firefight. Soundwave won’t be able to fight all of them off, especially not with his current state of injury, but he’s not to be underestimated. Given the chance, Soundwave will certainly take Ratchet as a hostage. Optimus’s combat systems cycle on in preparation.

Soundwave, though, comes to a halt in front of some twisted scrap metal. Optimus enables magnification, and quickly realizes that the scrap is from a missile, still hot on infrared—and etched with the symbol of the Primacy.

“This must be the missile that brought our ship down,” Optimus realizes. He comes to stand beside Ratchet—conveniently placing himself between him and Soundwave—and stares down at the symbol he knows all too well, the Matrix delicately inscribed in an outline of Cybertron. Wheeljack scurries over and begins inspecting what’s left of the missile.

“But how has Megatron managed to gain control of the Primacy’s planetary weapons systems?” Optimus asks. “Sentinel Prime wasn’t able to release the encryption before his death—even I don’t have access.”

Soundwave doesn’t say anything, but he tilts his visor somewhat pointedly in the direction of his arm, sitting in Optimus’s subspace. Optimus realizes belatedly that if Soundwave is unable to control the planetary weapons systems, it’s supremely unlikely that Megatron can, either.

Optimus nods back at him, acknowledging. “So who _is _controlling them?” he wonders aloud.

“Sentinel Prime,” Soundwave says.

“Sentinel Prime is deceased,” Ratchet says, impatiently. “And has been for nearly eight million years.”

“Affirmative.”

Ratchet starts to argue with him, but is interrupted by a sharp flash of light, and the sudden ominous whine of another projectile approaching.

“Get down!” Optimus roars, and throws himself bodily over Wheeljack and Bumblebee; Ratchet and Arcee duck under Soundwave, just in time for the shockwave to come rocketing over them. In the background, Optimus can hear the ship falling further apart. He grimaces, knowing that it may no longer be salvageable, even with assistance.

“Missed me!” Skywarp cackles, appearing suddenly beside them. He drops a massive pole on the ground; a quick scan reveals that it’s nothing dangerous, simply thorium-coated fiberglass. It has a few durasteel cables hanging off of it where it’s clearly been ripped from some unidentified structure. “Found the thing you wanted, Soundwave—whoa, what happened to your arm?”

“Arm irrelevant,” Soundwave says. He pulls a blaster out of his subspace, and Arcee immediately tries to shoot it out of his hand, but misses.

“Hey!” Skywarp says, and raises his own weapon at her head.

Optimus intervenes immediately, moving so that Arcee is safely behind him. “Stand down, Skywarp, Soundwave. You are outnumbered.”

Soundwave, undeterred, issues several blasts straight down at the surface, then jabs the pole into the weakened ground.

“More than one way to dig a hole,” Wheeljack mutters, sounding vaguely inspired. Soundwave ejects a set of prongs from his remaining hand and physically connects to the pole he just installed.

“What’s he doing?” Arcee demands, pushing her way out from behind Optimus.

“I don’t know,” Skywarp says. “Who ever knows what Soundwave is doing? Not me.”

They all watch for several astrominutes as Soundwave stands silently connected to the pole. Optimus carefully monitors the surrounding airspace for outgoing communication signals, but the pole appears to be designed for passive reception only.

“Signal located,” Soundwave says. He disconnects from the pole and starts walking. “Follow.”

Arcee shoots Optimus a significant look. “Hold up, Soundwave,” Optimus says firmly. “I need you to explain what your plan is, first, and _then_ we’ll decide if we’re going anywhere.”

“And if _you’re_ going anywhere,” Arcee interjects. Optimus waves her down, exasperated; Arcee’s dedication is of course admirable, but she’s certainly one of his more quick-tempered warriors.

Soundwave points to their downed ship, then to the strike location of the second missile. “Primacy-controlled planetary weapons systems: activated. Autobots, Decepticons: cannot leave Cybertron while system activated. Conclusion: planetary weapons system, must be deactivated. Soundwave, confirmed: signal originates from underneath Iacon Capitol.”

“That’s where the Senatorial archives are,” Arcee says, suspiciously.

“Affirmative,” Soundwave says.

Optimus gives it some thought, putting the conditions through a situational evaluator, but truthfully, his mind is already made up. Soundwave is unlikely to betray them before his immediate goals are accomplished, and they _do_ need to be able to get off the planet without being shot down again. And beyond operational considerations—the intimate damage that Soundwave has taken is no minor thing. If other Decepticons are responsible for the damage—and why else hasn’t he been repaired, Optimus’s evaluator helpfully interjects—then this may be the first opening they’ve _ever_ had to sway Soundwave over, in all eight million years of their war.

Of course, Optimus can’t communicate this reasoning to the others; there’s no such thing as a private communication in such close proximity to Soundwave.

“Very well,” Optimus says. “But Skywarp, Soundwave, I warn you: if this is some plot of Megatron’s, I will ensure that it does not succeed.”

Optimus glances one last time in the direction of the ship, and realizes that the automated defenses will prevent Soundwave and Skywarp from flying as well. “We’ll have to accommodate Skywarp and Soundwave’s walking speed,” he tells the others.

“Nah, if we stay low enough the targeting system won’t recognize us,” Skywarp says. “It picks up on warp, but otherwise I haven’t been getting shot at until about a hundred meters up.”

Soundwave nods. “Clearance acceptable,” he says.

Optimus doesn’t question their judgement; they’ll have to navigate carefully through the ruins, but Skywarp is an accomplished flyer, and Soundwave is unlikely to overestimate his abilities.

“Alright then,” Optimus says. “Autobots, roll out.”

It’s a long drive; at some point, Bumblebee ends up hitching a ride inside of Optimus, and Skywarp takes to looping back and swooping over them every so often. But eventually the tall, crumbling spires of Iacon appear in the distance, and Optimus calls a stop.

“I want everyone well-rested before we enter Iacon,” he says.

There’s a little protest—mostly from Arcee, who wants to get it over with—but Optimus stands firm. Iacon itself is structurally unstable from the near-constant bombardment at the beginning of the war, and still riddled with unexploded ordnance; the Capitol building is certain to be in an even more unstable condition, and has been unoccupied for nearly seven million years.

Soundwave’s chest plating slides open, and Ravage comes transforming out. “Operation: stand guard,” Soundwave tells him, then lies down and appears to sink straight into a rest cycle without a second thought.

Optimus assigns Bumblebee to take watch with Ravage, then lies down himself. But even as he hears the others slipping into recharge, systems humming as self-repair and defrag processes take over, Optimus finds himself staring blankly up into the dark. His primary processing unit is too active, and his emotional coprocessors keep preempting system resources for unfounded speculation, interrupting his strategic planning. He can’t stop thinking about Soundwave, about the damage that he’d seen. Soundwave hides it well; Optimus never would have suspected, if he hadn’t seen for himself.

Eventually he gives up and goes to sit with Bumblebee. Ravage doesn’t show up on a short-range scan, but Optimus knows he’s sure to be lurking nearby.

“Not gonna recharge?” Bumblebee asks.

“Not at this moment,” Optimus tells him.

Bumblebee glances at Soundwave over his shoulder, then looks at Optimus meaningfully. Optimus shakes his head; Soundwave _is_ the source of his unrest, but not for the reasons Bumblebee presumably suspects.

They sit together in silence for a little while, and Optimus stares out into the wastes. There’s nothing to see except destruction: half-slagged structures and the jutting remnants of their highway system as far as optical magnification will allow, interrupted only by the gaping holes scattered across the landscape. For all of Megatron’s talk of glorious empires—this the progress he’s wrought. Optimus feels a shudder run through his sensory subsystem, and for a moment, he can _see _the millions of unique, irreplaceable sparks that once lived there, lost to this interminable war.

Optimus shakes his head, hard, and the vision clears. He stands up abruptly. There’s no sense in dwelling on such things; he knows well enough by now that it will only increase his system stress load, which has been at nearly intolerable levels for the entirety of the war. Even without sources of stress beyond their current conflict, his emotional subsystem already requires regular medical intervention to manually redistribute its inflated power demands once a quartex.

A nudge at his leg draws his attention, and he looks down to see Bumblebee, optics bright with concern.

“You okay, boss?” he asks.

“I am alright,” Optimus assures him. “Simply ready for a rest cycle.”

Bumblebee nods, appeased, and Optimus turns and goes to join the others. Wheeljack is sprawled out in a haphazard pile of limbs that looks wildly uncomfortable, and Arcee is curled up tight next to him, looking even smaller in comparison. Beside them, Ratchet’s vents are rattling loudly with every exhaust. And on the other side of their little camp, Skywarp is recharging quietly, his wings fluttering occasionally. Soundwave is still and silent beside him. The tensor cable, all that’s left of Soundwave’s damaged arm, is lying perfectly straight at his side.

In the morning, they all get up and head into the city, following Arcee’s lead. She’s the most familiar with safe routes through the city, and more than once prevents them all from stumbling over antipersonnel mines or falling through the crumbling surface layer and down into the warren of tunnels below. Thanks to her assistance, they all make it to the Capitol building without incident.

The Capitol itself has been almost completely destroyed, nothing like the gilded towers Optimus first stood before as a newly-minted Prime. Although truthfully, Optimus has never seen it whole; he didn’t become Prime until _after_ Megatron had razed the right wing in his initial attack on the Senate.

The only thing left standing is a magnificent glass shard, said to come from the very first Cybertronian civilization. Optimus stops and places a hand on it, staring up at its point far above; this shard is the very last remnant they have of a people long lost to time.

Skywarp comes up beside him and raps his knuckles against the glass. “Pretty big,” he says. He turns and looks back at Soundwave. “How come we never blew this up? We got the rest of it.”

“Monument: resistant to energy weapons,” Soundwave says.

Optimus offlines his visual feed for a moment. It’s been eight million years, and still he cannot comprehend the Decepticons’ seemingly insatiable appetite for destruction.

Arcee comes and lays a hand on his arm, quiet, and then goes to pry up the entrance to the Capitol’s basement levels. The heavy shielding there protected them from the worst of the bombardment; although much of the furniture and decoration has been displaced, the structural integrity remains surprisingly sound, even for a mech of Optimus’s size.

“Can you lead us to the control room, Soundwave?” Optimus asks.

Soundwave shakes his head. “System blueprints required,” he says. “Exact location of controls unknown. Additionally, safeguards against unauthorized deactivation certainly present. Without blueprints, chance of successful weapons deactivation, no casualties: fourteen point three-five percent. Below minimum acceptable threshold.”

“You want access to the archives,” Arcee says, suspiciously.

“Autobot assistance not required,” Soundwave says.

“Enough,” Optimus interjects. “We’ll all search the archives.” At this point, nothing contained in the archives is going to change the course of the war; no Autobot has entered the archives since the Capitol was originally abandoned, and after eight million years of warfare and the complete destruction of their government, economy, and planetary infrastructure, any once-sensitive information stored there no longer has relevance.

Arcee leads them through darkened hallways, emergency lighting still faintly pulsing low on the walls. Here and there are the signs of their haphazard evacuation: datapads and handheld consoles scattered near overturned cabinets, doors hanging open to reveal half-emptied rooms, and the occasional first and second generation energy weapons left lying around, relics left over from peacetime.

At the entrance to the archives, Optimus has to retrieve his original encryption key from long-term archival storage. Behind him, he can hear Soundwave ejecting Rumble.

“Operation: locate planetary defense system blueprints,” Soundwave says.

“If you say so, boss,” Rumble says. “Where are we? This doesn’t look like our kinda decorations.”

Bumblebee snorts.

“Location: senatorial archives,” Soundwave says, as Optimus finally gets the door open and steps inside.

Inside, there are endless rows of neat black databanks, organized by subject and date. An internal inquiry returns the general location of the defense infrastructure files, but even that limited area will take a significant effort to search, as the files are not accessible through the network. At the start of the war, Optimus could have simply called upon one of the dedicated archivists, but now—there are no longer any archivists remaining.

“Let me have Soundwave’s arm,” Ratchet says, coming up beside him. “I’ll try to get it restored at least to base functionality while the rest of you search the archives.”

Optimus doesn’t argue, just accesses his subspace and hands the arm over to Ratchet. They could use his help searching, but Ratchet is a consummate healer, and he won’t be satisfied until he’s completed his repairs.

“The files should be located in the back west quadrant,” Optimus tells the others, while Ratchet clears some space near the entrance and gets his kit out. “We’ll need to establish a search grid.”

“Negative,” Soundwave says.

“Have you identified a different file location?” Optimus asks.

In response, Soundwave turns to the east and makes for the far wall.

“That section holds the Senate Committee’s private meeting minutes,” Optimus tells him.

“System controlled by Primacy, Sentinel Prime,” Soundwave says. “Senatorial archives, unlikely to contain necessary information.”

There’s the slight buzz of external subspace communication, and a row of databanks begins shifting over to the side, revealing a well-hidden durasteel door.

“Whoa,” Rumble says, coming to stand at Soundwave’s feet. “A secret door! What’s back there?”

“Primal archives,” Soundwave says. He turns to Optimus and indicates a panel next to the door. “Validation required.”

Underneath his mask, Optimus grimaces. His ascension in the wake of Sentinel’s death was—somewhat incomplete. Optimus _is_ the Prime; he was rebuilt to hold the Matrix, and confirmed by Alpha Trion himself. But Sentinel died without transmitting the Primal encryption key, and the only mechs in possession of the codes required to reset it had both perished in the same battle that took Sentinel’s life. Optimus is barred from more than the projects stored under Sentinel’s _personal_ key, such as the planetary defense net; he has never been able to so much as step foot in the Primal chambers or the Hall of Ascension. Even now, with so many other aspects of the Primacy permanently lost, he is unable to access the portion of the Primal archives still available through the network, much less the physical archive Soundwave has uncovered.

“I am unable to unlock the archives,” Optimus admits.

Soundwave stares at him. “Possession of Matrix confirmed,” he says, eventually.

“I am not in possession of Sentinel Prime’s encryption key,” Optimus says, “and the Primal encryption key could not be transferred to me. We will have to find another solution.”

Rumble looks back and forth between Optimus and the archive door. “Wait, you can’t even—” he cuts off suddenly, glancing up at Soundwave.

Soundwave looks at Optimus appraisingly for several long moments, then seems to come to some internal conclusion. “Soundwave: will provide access,” he says. “Validation of Matrix required to reset key.”

“Only the chair of the Primal Advisory Council or the Speaker of the Senate could reset the key,” Optimus says. “How have you come into possession of the necessary codes?”

“Method irrelevant,” Soundwave says. He turns back to the door and, producing a multitool from one of his remaining fingers, begins to pry open the access panel.

After a few minutes of finagling, Soundwave waves him over. “Access to network established,” he says. “Key prepared for reset. Provide verification of Matrix.” He has Optimus lay a hand on the access panel, and a brief shock of electrical power bursts through Optimus’s systems; he feels the Matrix activating in his chest, generating a new key to the encryption that even the most talented Autobots have never been able to crack.

The door opens. Inside, databanks extend from floor to ceiling in rows of gleaming durasteel, filled with datasticks and thick tablets that Optimus recognizes as hard copy files. The room is dark but pristine, completely untouched by the destruction above.

A sudden burst of air on Optimus’s leg plating engages his haptic sensors, and he looks down to see Rumble bouncing past him into the archives.

“This is gonna take _forever_,” Rumble complains. “Why do Autobots gotta keep so much stuff?”

“This _is_ a library,” Optimus explains.

“Boooriiiiing,” Rumble says, singsong.

The others start filing past Optimus into the room, but Bumblebee stays behind.

“Do you really want to let Soundwave in here?” he asks.

Optimus nods, already resigned to it. His original reasoning remains unchanged; nothing stored in these archives remains relevant to their current war efforts. Information about Sentinel’s projects or secret Primal rituals that haven’t been performed since Optimus’s ascension will do the Decepticons no good. They will simply have to ensure that the Decepticons do not make off with any dangerous weapon designs, although truthfully, Optimus suspects any such designs will be so outdated as to be useless.

“We’ll need to keep an eye on the information he accesses,” Optimus says, “and ensure he acquires no dangerous intelligence.”

Bumblebee nods. “I’m on it, boss,” he says.

Optimus follows him into the archives, where Wheeljack has already been hard at work establishing a search grid and handing out assignments. Only Ratchet has been excluded, left behind in the senatorial archives to work on Soundwave’s arm.

Optimus locates his assigned section and gets started, methodically pulling each individual datastick and plugging it into his handheld console, then running a quick search program for keywords. Unfortunately, many of the files in his section are hard copies, necessitating a visual review. Beyond that, in Optimus’s section, project files on transformation research are mixed in with Primal spark readings and special operations subject profiles. It quickly becomes clear that the files have been deliberately disarranged, presumably to impede exactly the kind of search they are currently undertaking.

Optimus picks through the data with increasing concern; the information is scattered wildly, but the glimpses he’s getting are painting an unpleasant picture. There’s an unnervingly detailed report regarding cover-up of contaminated energon in Kaon, complete with offhand references to thought-probing machines; he finds a report on the maximum depth pressure non-spaceworthy Cybertronians can withstand before taking permanent damage to internal components, with the data sorted neatly by armor grade; perhaps most ominous is a hard copy list of high-quality fabricators with a stack of blackmail on factory owners and overseers underneath. Optimus has always suspected that of the Decepticons, Megatron and Shockwave at the very least were illegal builds, but the list hints at a scale he hadn’t imagined.

When Optimus ascended to the Primacy, he knew that things were being—hidden from him. The mad scramble in the senatorial archives when he first arrived was proof enough, besides the unpleasant and supercilious advice he received from his original councillors, and the initial backlash from his edict prohibiting the worst of functionalism. But truthfully, he’d thought he stamped out the worst of the corruption.

Optimus forces the thought out of higher-level processing; there’s nothing to be done about it now. All he can do is what he’s been doing: defending his people, fighting for a better world, _believing_ in a different future. He tamps down on conscious emotional processing and throws himself into the datawork, doing his best to sift mindlessly through the data. In the background, he can feel his systems churning away at the new information, but none of it is beyond his ability to integrate and withstand.

Ratchet comes in at some point, carrying Soundwave’s arm. “I’ve done what I can,” he says, thumping the repaired arm on the floor. He turns to Soundwave. “I don’t have any spare shoulder servos, and the joint is completely crushed. I should be able to finagle a temporary reattachment, but you won’t be able to do much with it—moderately fine motor activities only, and no lifting.”

Soundwave stares silently for a moment, then reaches into his subspace. Arcee tenses, but Optimus set a routine to monitor Soundwave’s subspace usage the first time he retrieved a blaster from it, and he isn’t reaching for a weapon now. Instead, Soundwave pulls out what appears to be a spare shoulder servo, as well as an incomplete joint assembly. The brief glimpse into his subspace reveals an assortment of other spare parts and medical supplies.

“Components: satisfactory?” Soundwave asks, handing the parts over to Ratchet.

Ratchet scowls. “They’ll do,” he says. “I didn’t know you had medical supplies. Was that a pain suppressor I saw stashed away in there?”

“Negative,” Soundwave says. Ratchet looks unconvinced, and Soundwave pulls the device out for him to examine. It _does_ look like a pain suppressor, but after a brief inspection is revealed to be an electromagnetic neural tangler.

“_Decepticons_,” Ratchet curses, scowling even harder. ”I’ll be keeping this,” he tells Soundwave, shoving the device roughly into his own subspace. Soundwave doesn’t argue, and Ratchet goes back to work on his arm with the new components.

Optimus returns to his section, occasionally consulting with Wheeljack on one blueprint or another, but is unable to find any documentation on the planetary weapons system. He’s deep into a promising Senate log of banned military-grade weapons when Rumble lets out a loud noise of disgust, interrupting the near-silence of the archives. Optimus looks up from his file.

“Ugh, Autobots are so _weird_,” Rumble says. He’s perched on one of the databank’s shelves, legs swinging off the edge. “Why are you guys so obsessed with us not having faces, anyway?”

Skywarp ambles over and leans over his shoulder to look, then rears back. “Whoa, I didn’t even know Shockwave _had_ a face. Gross.”

“It gets even weirder than that,” Rumble says. “Look at all this stuff! They don’t even want to chop faces off, they want like, not even a face at all. There’s like a whole vorn’s worth of blowing up factories or whatever with frame rejections.”

“Let me see,” Ratchet says, getting up from his work on Soundwave’s arm. Optimus follows.

Ratchet takes the offending datafile from Rumble and plugs it into a handheld console. Inside, the files are all labeled “Project Lamina,” ordered by date. The very first picture is horrific, a gruesome picture of a mech with his face entirely removed, his internal wiring loose in the gaping hole. Optimus can hardly stand to look at it, his fuel tank sloshing around unsettled. 

Ratchet swipes the image off screen and waves his hand over his shoulder, shooing Skywarp back when he gets too close. “All of you back off,” he says, but he switches the console to projection mode, so they can all experience the data visually. He starts flipping through the files. There _is_ one for Shockwave; in the initial headshot he’s almost unrecognizable with two optics and even a full mouthplate, but another image capture further down in the file, labeled “post-procedure,” clears any doubt Optimus might have had.

“What is this?” Ratchet asks.

“I don’t know, but there’s a ton of it,” Rumble says. “There’s like a whole shelf of hard copies. The good stuff is all hidden up here, that’s where I found Shockwave.”

Optimus can’t seem to stop staring at the photo of Shockwave. His single optic, set deep into a heavily armored cranial unit, seems to stare back. Optimus had always assumed that’s Shockwave’s... non-traditional construction was a choice made to accommodate his transformation capabilities. But that’s—not what the file indicates.

“Subject 118: complete facial extirpation. Expression successfully limited to core-responsive headfins. Subject retained function after the hypothesized fatality accretion limit of seventeen astrominutes with no demonstrable side effects. Possible unique contributing factors: class seven power core rating of four-hundred seventy-five terawatts, stable profile score of thirty-six on the Epimetheus-Xantraal neuropsychological scale, and non-ambulatory transformation mode,” Ratchet reads aloud, from the introductory notes. He stops to look at Optimus. “That doesn’t exactly sound aboveboard,” he says, grim.

It certainly does not. Optimus reaches for the hard copies, purposefully created on a device without data access capabilities to prevent the upload or download of information. Unlike the initial file set, these can’t be plugged into a console, even just for projection. As he flips through them, the clogged feeling in his fuel pump grows worse: only “successful” cases are listed, but the case numbers go into the thousands.

Soundwave, who has been working silently the whole time, comes over and dumps a stack of datapads in front of Skywarp.

“Review data,” he tells Skywarp. Skywarp makes a face, but sits back down and picks up one of the datapads anyway.

Wheeljack snorts. “Guess that means it’s time to get back to work,” he says.

Optimus looks down at the files he’d been reviewing, and then returns them to Rumble. The blueprints are not contained in those files, and he can’t allow himself to become distracted. They need to get off Cybertron as soon as possible, and that won’t happen if Megatron finds them before the planetary weapons system can be deactivated.

He returns to his own section and dives back in; he’s just beginning to experience lagging search routine completion times when Ratchet interrupts.

“It’s been fourteen hours,” Ratchet says. “It’s going to take at least fifty-six more hours to get through everything at the rate we’re going, even with all of us working. We should all break now and take our rest cycles, so we don’t risk missing any details. I need to get Soundwave’s arm installed, anyway.”

Optimus looks at the remaining data storage and is forced to agree. If anything, Ratchet’s estimate is optimistic.

“Very well,” Optimus says. “Arcee, can you find us a place to make camp?”

Arcee salutes and takes off. Optimus records the placement of his current files in short term memory for the next shift, then gets the others together and out of the archives to wait for Arcee.

Arcee decides that they’ll risk less chance of getting crushed if they make camp outside, so they end up clearing a spot in the remnants of the Solus Memorial, in between the rubble of several destroyed monuments and far from any buildings. Ratchet sets Wheeljack and Bumblebee to work clearing an operating space right away, and Optimus stands over to the side, staring down at the decorative inlaid durasteel still remaining in the pavement, part of a grand mosaic that once spanned the entire Iacon Mall. On the other side of the memorial, Skywarp and Rumble have climbed on top of an overturned staircase and are sitting there taking potshots at what’s left of the frieze.

Arcee comes up to Optimus as Ratchet starts preparing Soundwave’s arm for reattachment.

“Are you sure we should be doing this, Optimus?” She waves a hand toward Ratchet pointedly. “This is Soundwave we’re talking about. He wouldn’t be reattaching any of _our_ arms.”

“It is the right thing to do,” Optimus tells her. “And while he is our prisoner, we won’t deny him needed medical care.”

“He’s barely a prisoner,” Arcee says. “We don’t exactly have him locked up. And when he decides to try and escape, which he _will_, our lives would be a lot easier if he didn’t have two arms to do it with.”

“It hardly seems to impact his mobility,” Optimus points out, which is true, but of course not her point. “But you are welcome to present your argument to Ratchet.”

Arcee gives a frustrated huff and goes to establish the perimeter; she knows as well as Optimus does that there’s no point in arguing with Ratchet about medical services.

Optimus looks behind him to see Soundwave sitting leaned back quietly with Ravage beside him. He’s seemingly focused on watching Ratchet, but Optimus is certain he heard the entire conversation nonetheless.

“Alright,” Ratchet says, once he’s satisfied with the arm. “It’s ready. Go ahead and eject your cassettes, then come lie down over here.” He indicates the wide area Wheeljack and Bumblebee had cleared out for him.

Soundwave, who had stood up as soon as Ratchet started to speak, hesitates just long enough to irritate Ratchet. He’s presumably reluctant to reveal which cassettes he has available.

“It’s medically necessary,” Ratchet snaps. “As I’m sure you’re aware. Come on, so I can get this arm reattached.”

Soundwave doesn’t move, and after a moment, Optimus wonders if he is going to; certainly, he hasn’t appeared even slightly inconvenienced by the loss of his arm. But eventually, Soundwave seems to reach some internal conclusion, and gives the command to eject his cassettes.

Buzzsaw comes shooting out, transforming easily in midair. Close behind him is the obvious source of Soundwave’s reluctance: not Laserbeak or Frenzy, but an entirely new cassette, clearly modeled after a boltbat. At most, he’s half the size of any of the others.

He’s also not much of a flyer yet; he goes careening wildly through the air and slaps right into Optimus’s central vents. He scrabbles around for a moment, then nestles in close, digging his little claws into Optimus’s plating so that he can hang on.

“Hello there,” Optimus says, unintentionally charmed. “Can you tell me your designation, little one?”

“Ratbat.” Soundwave’s visor flashes. “Return.”

Ratbat flattens himself further into Optimus’s vents instead. He eyes Optimus beadily from his perch. “Who are you?” he asks.

“Designation: Optimus Prime,” Soundwave says, before Optimus can respond. He comes up and removes Ratbat from Optimus’s vents. The little cassette wriggles fiercely and tries to fly back, but Soundwave keeps a firm hold. “Ratbat, desist.”

“Are you sure?” Ratbat asks, once he’s settled down. “He doesn’t look _that_ big.”

Underneath his mask, Optimus smiles; that’s a first. “I am of a size with Megatron,” Optimus says.

“Megatron is bigger,” Ratbat announces. “And not so slippery. What’s your fuel tank capacity?”

Optimus can’t help but laugh. “What’s yours?” he deflects.

“Point-five astroliters,” Ratbat tells him. “I’m efficient.” He looks Optimus up and down appraisingly. “You don’t look very efficient,” he says.

“I don’t imagine I’m quite as efficient as you are, no,” Optimus says, somewhat dryly. Ratbat preens, clearly pleased.

Optimus looks back up at Soundwave and privately smiles. “He must be _very_ new.”

Soundwave doesn’t respond, and Ratchet chooses that moment to interject. “Let me get this arm installed,” he says. “You’ll have to put Ratbat down somewhere for a few minutes.” Ratchet pauses for a second, and then says, “I can take a look at him next, if you want.”

“Negative,” Soundwave says, but he does let Ratbat go. He lays down so Ratchet can work, and Ratbat immediately flies back to Optimus, chittering. This time, Optimus holds out an arm for him to land on. Soundwave looks over at them, but doesn’t get up.

Ratbat squirms around a little on Optimus’s arm. “I’m itchy!” he complains, apparently unconcerned by Optimus’s identity as the leader of the enemy faction. Optimus chuckles and reaches over with his unoccupied hand to scratch under Ratbat’s ears.

Ratchet spends a few minutes with his hand deep in Soundwave’s shoulder socket, then sits back and reaches for Soundwave’s detached arm.

“I can still re-route your pain processing, if you have a functioning port,” Ratchet says. “I wouldn’t generally perform this kind of procedure without pain relief.”

“Negative,” Soundwave says.

“Alright,” Ratchet replies. “Get your tensor cable positioned, then I’m going to get this arm in place. It’s going to shock your system and trigger a reboot—I can’t prevent that without infirmary equipment. I’ll complete the connection while you’re rebooting.”

Soundwave nods understanding. Ratchet doesn’t delay; as soon as Soundwave’s tensor cable is in place, he slots the arm into the socket and jams it in quickly. Sparks shoot everywhere, and Soundwave stiffens all over, visor flaring, before his body slumps into reboot.

“Soundwave!” Ratbat cries. Optimus grabs him before he can take off. Ratbat makes a valiant effort at escape, fluttering wildly in Optimus’s hands. “Let me go! Let me go!”

Optimus struggles to keep him contained without injuring him, uncomfortably aware of how delicate Ratbat’s construction must be. “It’s alright,” he says, trying to soothe. “Soundwave is unharmed, he’s simply rebooting.”

“Yeah, quit freaking out, Ratbat, you’re being a sparkling,” Rumble says, from behind Skywarp’s leg. Buzzsaw squawks agreement.

Unsurprisingly, this only results in even more frantic struggling. Wheeljack comes over to assist, and between the two of them, they manage to safely detain Ratbat. Ratbat sinks his teeth into Optimus’s hand in retribution.

“Soundwave’s really outdone himself with this one,” Wheeljack says. “I’d really like at least a scan—I don’t even know _how_ he managed to integrate a full vocal unit into such a small-scale system.”

“Good luck getting Soundwave to agree to that,” Ratchet says, still hard at work on Soundwave’s shoulder.

“How’s it coming over there?” Wheeljack asks him.

“All good so far,” Ratchet says. “Putting down the final welds now. It’s going to be a lot to process without pain relief, but the repairs are already integrating nicely. That independent tensor cable is one hell of a trick; I’m basically doing a plating integration, not a full arm. If we could figure out how to reproduce it…”

Wheeljack looks over with a gleam in his eye that Optimus instantly recognizes.

“Try not to destroy anyone’s limbs in the process,” Optimus tells him, already resigned. “And that includes your own.”

Ratchet sits back, and Soundwave’s visor starts to illuminate. He reboots in silence.

“Feel okay?” Ratchet asks him. “Move that arm a little and tell me if anything feels out of place.”

Soundwave sits up and dutifully tests his arm. “Full range of motion restored,” he says, after a minute, then opens his chest compartment. “Ratbat, return.”

Ratbat attempts to shoot over to him immediately, but Ratchet intervenes. “Keep a hold of him!” he yells, then rounds on Soundwave. “And you, close that up. You can’t dock for at least seven hours; that arm was just attached, and you don’t have access to pain relief or standard medical integration routines. That significantly increases the risk of delayed system shock or sudden limb rejection, and the backlash could seriously damage your cassettes.”

Soundwave stares at him for a moment, then nods, closing up the subspace compartment without argument. Ratbat finally manages to dart between Wheeljack’s fingers and escape.

“You need to get some recharge right away,” Ratchet continues his medical tirade. “Power down fully so your system has a chance to integrate without straining available resources.” He indicates the dim light of Soundwave’s visor.

Soundwaves nods, taking Ratbat and setting him on his newly repaired shoulder. They go to sit off to the side, and Optimus does the same on the other end of their camp, intending to lie down and run a defrag cycle before he attempts to recharge. But his systems sensitivity is still all the way up from handling Ratbat, and he can’t help but overhear Soundwave’s quiet admonishment.

“Autobots: dangerous,” Soundwave says. His voice isn’t soft, exactly—Optimus isn’t certain that he _can_ modulate tone—but it’s decidedly lower. “Optimus Prime: dangerous.”

“_You’re_ dangerous,” Ratbat says, and flaps around a little.

“Soundwave: not dangerous for Ratbat,” Soundwave tells him.

Optimus’s vocalizer tries to activate, systems jerking on a denial; Ratbat is clearly a newspark, in no danger from Optimus or any of the other Autobots. But as Optimus’s logic unit ruthlessly points out, Decepticons don’t usually spend much time developing before joining the front lines. It’s only Ratbat’s extremely small size and therefore limited processor capacity that prevent him from remotely downloading a full combat suite_ right now_. And once he _does_ get out in the field—

Ratchet comes over to sit beside him, lowering himself down with a grunt. “That one’s gonna be a handful when he completes his development,” he says.

“He’s a handful now,” Optimus replies.

He watches as Rumble comes up to Soundwave and climbs into his lap, exposing a port on the back of his neck. Soundwave accepts the connection easily, presumably helping Rumble run a defrag cycle—Ratchet has long suspected that the cassettes rely on Soundwave for the majority of their basic maintenance activities, defrag included. After Soundwave retracts his cable, he just holds Rumble there, unmoving. There’s nothing particularly intimate about it, but Optimus looks away anyways, unable to dismiss the feeling of spying on something intensely private.

Eventually, Soundwave lies back down, his other cassettes coming to curl up around him as he sinks into recharge.

“I don’t think you realize quite how new Ratbat is,” Ratchet says. “If he didn’t recognize you, he hasn’t had access to the Decepticon archive at all. He must’ve been sparked here on Cybertron—probably not long before Soundwave was separated from Megatron and the others.”

Optimus looks away. This is the outcome of their war, of _Megatron’s_ war: there are no civilians, not anymore. Soundwave isn’t wrong to say that the Autobots are dangerous, that _Optimus_ is. But Optimus _wants him to be_, so desperately it almost feels true; mercilessly, he cuts that emotional tangent off at the source, shunting the entire experience abruptly out of his conscious processing. The Autobots cannot afford for him to—give into that desire.

“I got a good particle level scan in this time around,” Ratchet says, changing the subject. “The damage to Soundwave’s ports has been partially integrated into self-repair, and the self-repair pipeline itself has been redirected; it’s a common system response to preserve resources in the face of repeated injuries. This kind of damage doesn’t happen overnight; it’s repeated, and it’s purposeful. And it’s been _beyond_ neglected,” Ratchet growls. “His injuries clearly haven’t been treated at all.”

“Do you think that Hook isn’t capable of repairing him? Or just that he refuses to?” Optimus asks.

Ratchet snorts. “Neither. Any surgeon can do a simple port rebuild, and while addressing the self-repair system would be significantly more difficult, I’m certain that a surgeon of Hook’s ability would be capable. And to be honest, I can’t believe that even Hook would choose to leave this kind of damage unrepaired—he obviously either hasn’t been allowed to see it, or hasn’t been permitted to repair it.”

The implication is that someone has _chosen_ to prevent the repairs. Optimus turns away, sickened; his gross motor systems go briefly offline, and he receives an internal alert to run a contamination check on the fuel currently stored in his tank.

“Why does Soundwave remain in such a situation?” Optimus asks, when he can move again. “Surely he must realize that we would offer him asylum, in the face of such treatment.”

Ratchet looks over at him sharply. “You think _Megatron_ is responsible,” he says.

Optimus goes to deny it, but cuts himself off as he realizes that—who _else_ would have the power, not only to do this to _Soundwave_, but to do it over and over again, and to prevent his repair—

“Optimus, I think...” Ratchet trails off, and blows out a long stream of exhaust before he speaks again. “Look, I could be wrong, but I’m fairly certain that Soundwave’s done this to himself. His injuries—it takes repeated access over a significant period of time to damage the self repair system like that. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s been happening on a regular basis for at least the last one million years. And beyond that, he just doesn’t have any of the defensive injuries I’d expect to accompany an assault of that nature.”

“But why would he do such a thing?” Optimus asks, uncomprehending.

“Now _that_, I don’t know. I’d hypothesize that he’s trying to prevent unauthorized neural access—at the very least, he’s made field interrogation impossible. At this level of damage, it would take multiple surgeries in a legitimate infirmary to rebuild any of those ports enough to allow neural access at all.”

“But we don’t force neural access,” Optimus says. “I’ve never authorized that form of interrogation.”

“It could also be a response to neurotrauma,” Ratchet says. “But Optimus—you haven’t always been our commander. And Sentinel—”

“Sentinel Prime has been dead for eight million years,” Optimus interrupts, more harshly than he’d intended.

Ratchet looks down, optics flashing. “I know.”

They start their search again in the morning. Optimus gets back to the long grinding work of physical data searching without complaint, although it’s impossible to pretend true enthusiasm. The monotony is broken up only by the more egregious abuses documented in the scientific and military records. Optimus is all too aware of the suffering behind the dispassionate accounts, but he forces himself not to react to it, rerouting the emotional reactions into subconscious processing so he can work without interruption.

Optimus has long since known of the abuses that occurred under Sentinel’s regime, in broad terms, at least, if not the particulars. But he had never believed the corruption went this deep. Sentinel _did_ have access to these archives; nothing in these files was hidden from him. And these files detail _vorns_ of abuse, stretching back long before Sentinel or even Nova Prime. Worse, Optimus is beginning to suspect that some of these—experiments—may have continued on during his own regime. He doesn’t want to think it, but his emotional processes are merciless, highlighting thousands of memories for review, and he thinks now of Decepticons hurlings accusations at him on the battlefield or in holding cells, of “mistaken” requisitions for Decepticon-grade neural blocks landing on his desk, of turning a blind eye to the black box of “cultural investigations.”

But even as he aches for the wrongs that have been done, Optimus knows he can change nothing, now; to surrender is to lay his people down to die, and countless others with them, organic and mechanical worlds alike. There is nothing for it except to continue on, and Optimus forces himself to churn through the horrors in front of him with the same iron willpower that has kept him functioning through this interminable war.

After seven hours of nonstop work, Soundwave straightens suddenly, turning to face the entrance and extending a small satellite dish. “Signal strength increased,” he says, after a moment. “Physical triangulation possible. Operation: locate equipment, control room.”

He starts walking, satellite adjusting minutely with every step. Wheeljack darts a look at Optimus, then calls out to Soundwave.

“Hang on,” Wheeljack says. “I’m coming too, let me get disconnected from this databank.” He unplugs quickly and hurries after him. Presumably, he has the same concern as Optimus: if the chance arises, Soundwave will undoubtedly attempt to take control of the planetary weapons systems for the Decepticons, rather than deactivating them.

“I’ll go and keep an eye on things,” Arcee says, eyeing Soundwave suspiciously. Optimus nods permission, and she follows after them.

Ratchet takes over Wheeljack’s assigned section—he had been assisting Optimus with his—and Rumble leaves his own to rifle through Soundwave’s. Optimus watches him for a moment to ensure that he isn’t attempting to hide anything, but he seems to be continuing where Soundwave left off. Bumblebee gives Optimus a thumbs up from behind Rumble’s back, confirming.

Optimus briefly returns to his own section, but it isn’t long before he’s interrupted again, this time by Skywarp’s sudden exclamation of surprise.

“Is that _Soundwave_?” Skywarp asks. “I never knew he was a badass.”

“I coulda told you that,” Rumble says. “You think we’d be hangin’ around some kind of loser?”

“I don’t know, you seem like you hang around a lot of losers,” Skywarp says.

“Yeah, _you_,” Rumble tells him, and sticks his tongue out rudely.

Optimus comes over to look, and Rumble helpfully restarts the video for him. It’s high-quality, but clearly taken from an angled ceiling-height audiovisual surveillance device. The first several astroseconds are of an empty communications center, two walls stacked high with consoles and communications equipment.

Eventually, a maintenance mech comes in, accompanied by an upper-caste civilian administrator and three large military-class security mechs. All five of them have armor emblazoned with the Council insignia.

“This is the one,” the administrator says, pointing to a floor-mounted communications console in the center.

The maintenance mech leans down and plugs in a diagnostic scanner.

“Weird,” he says, after a moment. He extends a cable from his palm and one of the security mechs takes a heavy step forward.

“No direct connections,” the administrator interjects.

“Yeah, sorry,” the maintenance mech says, hurriedly retracting the cable. He tries again with the diagnostic scanner, which seems to work this time; he goes for his kit.

Under the close supervision of the administrator, the maintenance mech opens up a large access panel and performs what appears to be standard maintenance activities—he unbolts a damaged cable, cleans debris from several connection points, and checks in several times with his diagnostic scanner. The equipment itself doesn’t look particularly valuable or unique, but Optimus knows well that appearances can be deceiving.

He’s just beginning to wonder how long the maintenance goes on for when the communications console—transforms. It’s immediately recognizable as Soundwave, despite the broader user-interface extending across his chest panels; there’s a console screen where his subspace compartment should be. Tubing and data cables extend haphazardly from his frame, sparking wildly and dripping oil and lubricant and even energon everywhere as they’re jerked out of their connections.

The others jump back, but Soundwave launches into action immediately, ripping a different communications console out of the wall and slamming it into a security mech’s head, simultaneously letting loose an auditory blast out of nowhere; he doesn’t have his cannon, but his speakers are apparently up to the task, the sonic wave bowling over the civilians and sending the security mechs staggering.

“Where in the seven planes did he come from?” one of them shouts.

Soundwave yanks a metal strut loose from the communications equipment, and stabs the jagged edge deep into the injured mech’s shoulder jointing. The mech cries out, automatically turning away, and Soundwave takes advantage of his distraction to wrestle away his blaster. He starts firing, targeting joint seams and optical sensors, grabbing the unarmed administrator to use as a living shield for his less-armored components. This hampers the security mechs considerably, as they attempt to hit Soundwave without damaging the administrator.

“Get ‘im, Soundwave!” Rumble laughs, as Soundwave manages to take down a second security mech, then literally rips into the maintenance mech’s cranial unit from his optics when he tries to join the fray. The administrator, heavily damaged but still alive, screams hysterically as Soundwave scatters a handful of critical components across the floor.

Optimus watches frozen, systems unable to integrate the new information with his current intelligence on Soundwave. He’s literally _never_ seen Soundwave fight like this, not in eight million years of warfare, not in five-hundred thousand years of recorded gladiator fights before that—not ever.

Soundwave tosses the administrator at the last remaining security mech, then, blaster out of charge, throws himself after both of them. The security mech fires wildly, but he only has a first-generation energy weapon, low on charge, and even direct hits are no longer enough to penetrate Soundwave’s armor. Soundwave bashes the final mech’s head in with the end of the depleted blaster, then turns on the administrator.

“No, please!” the administrator cries, vocal unit gone static with stress, somehow still functioning enough to scrabble backwards frantically.

Soundwave doesn’t even pause, just dispassionately repeats the same move he used on the poor maintenance mech. Afterwards, he stands there for a moment, panting, oil and lubricant smeared all over his hands. Then he starts pulling the damaged tubing from his body, sending fluids flying. Optimus winces when he pulls one of the broken datacables straight out, socket and all, leaving a gaping hole where an access panel should be.

Once the tubing has all been tied off or removed, and the datacables destroyed, Soundwave returns to the equipment and plugs directly into a dataport where he pulled the console out of the wall. The feed from the surveillance device cuts off soon after.

Ratchet, who must’ve come over to watch as well, sits back heavily. When Optimus looks over at him, he’s just staring at the empty screen, optics flared white around the edges.

“When was this dated?” Optimus asks. He can only think—it must have been a mission gone terribly wrong, but Optimus _should_ know about it, even if happened during Sentinel’s reign.

Rumble pries open the datapad and splices a cable in, bypassing the lack of standard access ports meant to prevent the release of metadata.

“Whoever scrubbed this vid shoulda been fired,” Rumble says, triumphant. “Day 87, year 1756, vorn 22384. That’s even older than Ravage!”

“That can’t be right,” Ratchet says. “Soundwave wasn’t even on the gladiator circuit then, much less embarking on missions.”

“Pull your own metadata then, if you’re so great at it,” Rumble says, clearly offended.

“Hey, I found more,” Skywarp says, dropping one hard copy on the ground, and pulling a handful of others out from behind a box of standard datafiles.

Optimus picks up the one he dropped; it’s labeled “Project Lamina,” which he recognizes from datafile with Shockwave’s information. These files, though, are all Soundwave. The first file is all photos of Soundwave fresh off the line, with several shots of his head in profile with his mask removed to display the solid wiring underneath.

“Creepy,” Skywarp says, leaning over to see. Optimus looks up at him sternly, optics flashing, and he jumps away. “What!”

Optimus rifles through the data somewhat guiltily, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling generated by his emotional subsystem at violating Soundwave’s privacy. There can’t be much tactical value to the information—Soundwave has had at least one rebuild that the Autobots know of, so his initial construction documents are certainly out of date—but Optimus still feels driven to see for himself.

Optimus is no mech designer, but what he does understand from Soundwave’s initial construction blueprints is that the blueprints are for a mech designed to be almost entirely incapable of emotional expression. There is a single banded optical lens designed to look like a retractable visor; there is no vocal unit or even vocal synthesizer, and no facial expression components at all; the design notes go so far as to specifically exclude core-reactive lighting routines, which to Optimus’s knowledge were not withheld from even the most cheaply designed low-caste laborer. And these blueprints are not for a low-caste laborer.

Optimus sets the blueprints down on the floor. He stares down at them for a moment as his system begins to generate false pain reports, responding to the sudden processor load with requests for joint maintenance and notices of inadequate lubricant flow. Optimus widens his intakes, manually increasing his system’s airflow, then dismisses the warnings sitting in frontal processing and picks up the attached research notes.

It quickly becomes apparent that Soundwave was _commissioned_ for Project Lamina, rather than being taken as a subject post-construction as Shockwave was. His early life is laid out in brutal, dispassionate scientific detail: compliance ratings, core activity monitoring, neuropsychological stress load testing. One particularly disturbing datafile describes an open brain surgery undertaken to map the brain’s real-time processing structure while the subject—while _Soundwave_—remained conscious.

Optimus skims through the remaining datafiles. The many failed attempts to replicate Soundwave’s brain configuration point at a concerted effort to produce more faceless, voiceless Cybertronians, but what Optimus can’t manage to understand is _why_. What did Sentinel stand to gain if non-expressive mechs were introduced into general production?

The last datafile is a hard copy, but the tablet’s screen has been crushed, rendering the data inside almost entirely illegible. Optimus scrolls through several pages anyway, letting his speculation unit attempt to generate a cohesive narrative out of the data that is accessible, but the file cuts off mid-sentence. The fragmentary remains of the file have been inexpertly purged, and instead there is a note in Sentinel’s own hand:_ under control_.

Beside him, Ratchet makes a small, distressed sound, temporarily activating Optimus’s threat evaluation unit and allowing external perception back into primary awareness. Optimus takes the opportunity to wrestle resources back from his emotional subsystem, forcing his emotional routines back down into subconscious processing.

“Ratchet?” Optimus asks, resting a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“This is—this brain structure shouldn’t have even been able to initialize,” Ratchet says. He’s holding the blueprints Optimus had originally reviewed. “The configuration interferes with the function of critical components. If you look here,” he points to an unremarkable cross section of a wiring diagram, “there’s a sheathed access system where the standard core interface for his motivator should be. It’s—they’ve forcibly separated it. That isn’t a standard Decepticon design; that’s hardly a brain design at all.”

“What does that mean, Ratchet?” Optimus asks.

“It means they were trying to prevent him from accessing his own motivator,” Ratchet says, and his optics flare brightly with distress. “And Sentinel must have _known_, he must have—approved this—” He turns away, and Optimus can hear him rotating his internal fuel valves, trying to keep his energon down.

Optimus’s own system responds in kind, reporting circulation obstructions near his fuel pump—false, but the initial alert leaves him briefly unable to move, gross motor systems falling temporarily offline to prevent systems damage.

Skywarp snorts. “What’s _his_ problem?”

“I know slaves aren’t a big deal to you, but they are to _us_,” Bumblebee snaps at him, coming over to comfort Ratchet.

Rumble gives him an odd look. “Uh, isn’t that what you guys have been tryin’ to do to us this whole time?”

“What are you talking about?” Bumblebee says, clearly growing upset. “We’re not the ones letting Bombshell go poking around in people’s brains.” His optics are flaring slightly white around the edges.

Optimus intervenes, raising a hand to put a stop to the conversation. “We do not enslave sentient beings,” Optimus tells Rumble, perhaps less patiently than he might have liked. Even as he regains functionality, his system is still generating alerts, spamming frontal processing with environmental warnings. He sets a routine to identify inconsistencies and shunts the alerts out of the way.

“I might’ve been built after the war started, but I wasn’t built _yesterday_,” Rumble says, crossing his arms in offense.

“Yeah, you guys are always talking slag about how you’re gonna rebuild Cybertron or whatever if you win—”

“As _if_,” Rumble interjects. “Megatron’s gonna kick all of your afts for sure.”

Skywarp nods. “Yeah, exactly.” He pounds his fist into his palm for emphasis. “But even if you _did_, how else are you gonna make us do it?”

“Do what?” Bumblebee asks.

“Rebuild Cybertron!”

“Skywarp, are you trying to tell us that the Decepticons continue to make war because you believe we’re trying to enslave you and force you to reconstruct Cybertron?”

“What? No,” Skywarp says. “I mean, obviously we know you guys are a bunch of lying port lickers who wanna go back to having all the energon while we do all the work, but that’s not why we’re _fighting _you.”

“Why are you fighting, then?” Optimus asks. He can’t even begin to address the rest of Skywarp’s assertions.

“‘Cause we’re gonna win, _duh_,” Rumble says.

Optimus stares back at him, flabbergasted. He has occasionally, in moments of despair, felt as if the Decepticons are fighting just to be fighting, but he’s never considered it a _legitimate explanation_.

Before he can generate a response to _that_, Optimus’s environmental evaluation routines suddenly identify the inconsistency: not that his systems are generating false warnings, but that his systems aren’t having to filter out any background noise at all, beyond the standard mechanical and exhaust routines of their bodies. The low hum of the emergency lighting outside has suddenly gone quiet, and the archive’s shielding is—no longer active. Optimus’s own communications equipment is reporting unobstructed functionality for the first time since entering the Capitol for today’s shift in the archives.

An encrypted communication comes buzzing through, and Optimus immediately dives for Skywarp, but he’s just a microsecond too late. Skywarp grabs Rumble and flashes out of the archives, leaving Optimus’s hands grasping at empty air.

Optimus realizes immediately after—the shielding is down. “Everyone out, now!” he commands, and they get into senatorial archives just as the missile hits. The structure holds, but barely; with the Capitol building above razed to ash, and the shielding down, the archives won’t hold up against orbital bombardment forever. Optimus starts ushering the others out toward a safer section of the compound.

Wheeljack and Arcee come speeding over not long after they get to the main hallway. Both of them are mildly dented, and Wheeljack has clearly taken a blow to the helm, but neither of them appear to have taken damage that can’t wait for repairs.

“We lost him,” Arcee says. “And the weapons system is still active. Soundwave did take us to a control room, but it wasn’t the control room for the planetary weapons system.”

“Soundwave disabled Arcee with his cannon and then got me in the back of the head almost as soon as we got there,” Wheeljack explains. “He knocked my chronometer out of alignment, so I’m not sure how long we were in there, but when I rebooted he had taken out out the functional power supply for the building’s remaining systems. The containment generators and internal communications shielding are both down.” He pauses and looks around. “Soundwave must have found the blueprints after all.”

“No way,” Bumblebee says. “I was watching him every second. He didn’t connect to a single datafile without an intermediary—everything was hard copy or plugged into the console. There wasn’t any way for him to hide the blueprints if he found them.”

“Well, he must have wanted access to the Primal archives for _something_, and now he’s gone,” Wheeljack says. “So I guess the question is, what _did_ he find, if it wasn’t the details for the planetary weapons system?”

Arcee puts her hands on her hips and blows some exhaust, clearly frustrated. “Whatever he found, we can’t deal with it now. We have to get out of here before he gets to Megatron and the others. Megatron’s probaby with Shockwave now, and if they both come here…”

Arcee doesn’t need to clarify; Optimus’s tactical unit is returning the same conclusion. Optimus had run the initial mission risk calculations with the assumption that at least one of the two teams stationed on Cybertron would be available for combat support if needed. As is, the odds aren’t good even _without_ adding Shockwave to the mix.

Even as Optimus prepares to agree, his motivator suddenly halts the action, shutting down his attempted vocalization. Optimus attempts to return the directive to his logic unit—they clearly cannot remain—but the Matrix hums to life in his chest, generating a sudden sensation of intense pressure, pulling him inescapably forward.

“I cannot,” Optimus hears himself say.

“Arcee’s right, we have to get out of here,” Bumblebee says.

“_You_ have to get out of here,” Optimus tells him. “All of you. But there is something here I must attend to.”

None of them look convinced, but the tugging in Optimus’s chest grows stronger.

“All of you need to leave here and take shelter somewhere else—Arcee, keep trying to establish contact with Ultra Magnus or Elita. I’ll find you all when I’m done.”

He turns to leave, but Ratchet interrupts. “Optimus, Megatron is definitely going to come here,” he says. “With the shielding disabled, you’ll show up on a basic wide-range scan starting from six hundred astrometers outside the building.”

“I know,” Optimus tells him. “But I must stay nonetheless. Go on with the others.”

Ratchet gives him one last dubious look, but turns to follow behind Arcee with the others. As soon as they’re out of sight, Optimus gives in to the strengthening urge pulsing from the Matrix, and turns to walk deeper into the Capitol.

The Matrix leads him up out of the main Capitol building and to the tall golden doors of the Primal Basilica. It’s still standing, somehow, but the structural damage is significant, and it’s with considerable effort that Optimus manages to slide the heavy, ornate doors open. The resulting gap is just wide enough to squeeze through.

By all rights, Optimus’s ascension should have taken place here, open to all in the sanctuary. Instead, he’d formally ascended in the Councilroom, in front of an eager leering crowd of senators and councillors and upper caste mechs. It had been—uncomfortable. Optimus had nearly managed to forget those first days, but now his emotional processes, triggered by his surroundings, are pulling the sense-memory from his archives: the gleaming, greedy optics and shining armor of his audience; the strange and terrible weight of the Matrix in his chest; the sudden smallness of his surroundings, in comparison to his new size.

He rubs ineffectually at the areas where his paint has been scraped off getting through the doors. The sanctuary has been thoroughly looted, now, the floor pitted and cracked where even the inlaid durasteel has been pried up and taken. Worse still are the deactivated civilian frames curled up in corners and against the walls, some gravely injured, others clearly lost to starvation. Optimus can’t prevent the grief that washes over him. They must have come here to die, when all hope was lost.

He crouches down beside one, still recognizable as a middle-caste worker despite the greyed and pitted plating. Most of his armor is missing, but he hasn’t been stripped for resources; he must not have come here until late in their war. Optimus places a hand on the mech’s shoulder and cycles his optics off, just briefly.

The Matrix calms for a bare moment before the tugging is back, and Optimus gets up and moves on, walking through the sanctuary and stepping up onto the pulpit. The Matrix guides him to a massive door on the far side of the altar, where a low-powered ping requests his key. Some part of him still expects to be denied entrance, but his newly-minted encryption key is accepted without issue, and he hears the door snap unlocked several astroseconds before it begins to slide open.

The Matrix is still pulling him forward, but once inside, Optimus can’t bring himself to move any farther; he’s stuck staring up at the ceiling, at the enormous paintings illustrating the seven great Primal Deeds, and having the sudden realization that every other—that every other Prime has been in this place, and stood in this spot; every Prime before him has come here for their first true moments of resonance with the Matrix, and for Optimus, it’s happening _now_, after eight million long years of war, after his planet has been nearly lost. He knows, suddenly, that he could have entered this place all along. The encryption is nothing, compared to the energy suddenly rushing through the Matrix.

Optimus walks slowly towards the dais at the end of the hall, through the massive opalescent arches, as opulent and excessive as anything out of the Golden Age. In between the arches are statues of all the previous Primes, larger than life and inlaid with rare organic gems and platinum and even trinium, still glossy and brilliant after all this time.

He sweeps open the delicate woven glass curtains enshrining the dais, expecting more of the same, but inside there is only an undecorated obelisk of matte durasteel. It’s just barely taller than Optimus himself. He steps forward and places his hand on the obelisk, driven almost subconsciously by a deep certainty that there is something he must see, something he needs to know—

Unprompted, the data contact points in his palm open up access, and Optimus has only a bare astrosecond to realize he can’t pull away before the Matrix preempts his sensory inputs. He’s only vaguely cognizant of the Matrix claiming complete systems resources before it pulls him deeply into someone’s memory—into _Sentinel’s_ memory; Optimus recognizes the feel of it without knowing how, Sentinel’s cold removal and sharp mind.

He finds himself in Sentinel’s office, sitting behind Sentinel’s desk—and it_ is_ Sentinel’s desk, and his office, not the official offices of the Prime that Optimus has also used. This room is dark and opulently decorated, and standing across from Sentinel on the other side of the room is the head researcher for one of Sentinel’s projects, Polygonus, and another mech that Sentinel does not know, here to explain the project data.

The data cruncher—that’s how Sentinel thinks of him, and it’s slightly disconcerting to experience others as Sentinel would—pulls up his report. “I can’t recommend continuing with this experimental direction,” he says, voice high and wavering. “The successes of this program have been limited and unpredictable. So far, out of thousands of trials, there has been only one unqualified success. As you can see here, sir,” he points to a number on his chart, “the resource expenditure ratio is incredibly high. The design specifications and excess energon required for manual sparking are a significant investment of resources in and of themselves, and as the subterranean collapse at our plant in Stanix demonstrates, even a minor frame rejection can result in considerable destruction.”

“You still haven’t developed a method to predict frame rejection?” Sentinel asks Polygonus.

“I’m afraid not, my Prime,” Polygonus says. “Spark rejection is an uncertain science—some might even say it isn’t a science at all. We’ve been unable to replicate our single success story, even with identical spark mass and power ratings. In my professional opinion, Soundwave’s design simply is not reproducible; it’s an uncommon complication with manually produced sparks, but not unheard of.

“Still,” Polygonus continues, “some aspects of the project have been a success. Project Lamina has clearly demonstrated that the vast majority of Decepticon builds, and some Autobot builds, will accept permanently affixed plating over the majority of the facial components. In many cases, a permanent visor that conceals the optics can be installed as well with no ill effects. Although unauthorized removal is a concern, it would be difficult, if not impossible, without the assistance of a trained medical professional. Additionally, this method negates the need for compensatory emotional expression components seen in full facial extirpation.”

And Optimus can feel Sentinel’s _irritation_—his irritation, at what he sees as pure _inconvenience_: the inconvenience of dealing with paper pushers and data crunchers; the inconvenience of destroyed factories and expanded project timelines; the inconvenience that it’s proving impossible to routinely spark mechs without faces, or voices, or the capacity for emotional expression; all mere obstacles to his vision.

Something jerks in the memory, and Optimus finds himself—finds _Sentinel—_at an observation window overseeing an operating room. Sentinel is coldly furious, his hands clenched tightly at his sides, and he stares unblinkingly through the one-way window with a sense of cruel anticipation.

The patient in the operating room is immediately recognizable as Soundwave—he’s clearly unconscious, and is currently restrained on a mobile assembly table with his chest panel pried open. A team of medical personnel are installing a massive subspace pocket, powered by his core. Optimus leans in, confused; Autobot intelligence has always indicated that _Shockwave_ completed the modifications Soundwave required to support his cassettes, but this is clearly an Autobot facility.

“Ready,” the overseeing surgeon says. He’s the only one in the room Sentinel knows, a prolific surgeon by the name of Meritus.

There’s a large and complex piece of equipment that Optimus doesn’t recognize on a table beside the operating theatre, which he assumes is the power support structure for the cassettes. Two medical technicians rush to get it off the table and lowered into Soundwave’s newly installed subspace compartment, and an assistant quickly completes the subspace connections while Meritus integrates the equipment with the core.

“Alright,” Meritus says, when he’s finished inspecting the work. “That’s the regulator done. Let’s get the neurosurgeon in here.”

One of the medical assistants begins prying open Soundwave’s cranial compartment and a technician starts assembling neural blockers on a tray. Optimus can’t imagine why neural blockers would be needed, but all he gets from Sentinel’s memory is a vague sense of vindication.

“It almost seems unnecessary,” the neurosurgeon says conversationally, as he installs the blocks in neat rows along Soundwave’s emotional circuitry. “He’s mostly incapable of emotional expression anyway.”

“Orders are orders,” Meritus tells him. “Anyway, this should strengthen control over the motivator. That was the source of the recent—malfunction.”

The neurosurgeon laughs. “Yes, I heard about that,” he says. “Any luck on the source of the unauthorized modifications?”

“His armor? No. But I imagine it will all be sorted out shortly,” Meritus says. “Apparently he managed to _liberate_ a Senatorial encryption key to assist in his schemes; it’s just a matter of tracing the key use logs.”

“At least you have him back in custody now,” the neurosurgeon says. He produces an external magnifier from his subspace and starts installing the smaller secondary blocks. He gets seven or eight installed before Soundwave suddenly begins to move, his illumination routines coming online as he starts to struggle against the restraints. The technicians rush to get him pinned to the table.

“I thought you had the power dampener installed,” the neurosurgeon says sharply, stepping back from the scene.

Soundwave lets out a long, mechanical whirr, sparks shooting from his wrists, and one of the technicians falls back. A medical assistant quickly takes his place, using a protective barrier to keep Soundwave from shocking him off.

“It’s a regulator,” Meritus says. “There’s a higher margin of error.” He doesn’t seem concerned by the scene at all, just calmly consults a scanner hanging out of Soundwave’s opened chest compartment while the others hold him down. “It’s set to pull one-fourth of system capacity into an inaccessible secondary power system. I’m going to try upping that to one-third. I don’t think we can go any higher without risking core failure.”

Optimus watches, sickened, as the power regulator is adjusted and Soundwave’s struggles cease. He’s always believed the cassettes were a consensual modification—Soundwave certainly doesn’t act as if they’d been forced on him—but it’s quickly becoming clear that isn’t the case.

The neurosurgeon returns to work as soon as Soundwave is subdued, and it isn’t long before he retracts his surgical implements back into his fingers and declares his work complete. Meritus starts ordering the technicians around, apparently preparing for an additional procedure.

The door to the observation room opens, and Sentinel turns to watch Polygonus enter, still recognizable despite new coloring and extensive cosmetic modifications to his upper armor.

“My Prime,” Polygonus says, bowing low. “Everything is prepared for the installation, as you commanded.” He comes to stand at the observation window, where outside the medical assistant is reattaching Soundwave’s cranial plating.

“The procedure seems to be progressing smoothly,” Polygonus observes.

“It shouldn’t have been necessary,” Sentinel tells him, clearly displeased. “What happened to it being an ‘unqualified success,’ Polygonus?”

Polygonus cringes away a little; he covers it quickly, but Sentinel notices, and it only seems to incense him further.

“This is meant to be the _future_ of _Cybertron_,” Sentinel hisses. “I’ve sunk trillions of credits into your little project, and for what? Some laborers with masks welded onto them?”

“Sir, I know that the recent incident represents a… setback, in our research. Our investigation reveals that a member of an external research team illicitly provided Soundwave with unmonitored datanet access, resulting in contact with an individual who encouraged—non-compliant tendencies, which previously had not been noted in his behavior.”

“I am _aware_,” Sentinel says, dangerously. Optimus knows immediately that the identified individuals have been—dealt with; Sentinel isn’t thinking of the specifics, but he seems too cruelly satisified for anything else to have happened. 

“And,” Polygonus hurries to continue, “this has given us an opportunity to implement a further stage of research. Our recent breakthrough in directed transformation sequencing, combined with refinements to multi-layer neural inhibitor technology, will allow us to maintain Soundwave in the desired format while testing continues.”

“You’ll get your testing,” Sentinel says, after a long moment. “But I expect to see _results_, Polygonus. I want these drudges being churned out of the factory non-emotive from the start. Cybertron doesn’t need any more _obsoletes_ taking up valuable space, wasting energon on leisure activities and producing unauthorized spawn—as long as they’re emoting, we won’t be able to progress to the next stage, and I’ll be stuck in the Senate listening to that fool Alpha Trion calling for safety measures and welfare regimes.”

Polygonus bows low again. “Of course, sir,” he says, looking greatly relieved. “The next stage of development is promising, and I greatly anticipate our discussions of mass project implementation in the near future.”

Sentinel doesn’t bother responding, simply turns back to the observation window. Behind him, Polygonus makes a hasty retreat. Optimus is caught on the mention of obsoletes; the slur was accompanied by a sudden sense of resolve and anticipation, implying some greater plan that Optimus cannot see. But Sentinel turns his attention away from his—project, and back to Soundwave.

In the operating room, Meritus is hands deep in Soundwave’s chest compartment, installing a thick cable that appears to connect directly to his shielded internal reactor. Beside him, the medical assistant is fussing with the scanner.

“The commands are executing, but it isn’t going through,” the assistant says, eventually. “I think his ports may be manually locked.”

“Try a plate lever, Forcep,” Meritus says, sounding unconcerned. Then he smirks. “Or just a crowbar.”

One of the medical technicians laughs, and brings over the plate lever. This, too, is unsuccessful, and when the lever completely bends into the port he’s trying to pry open, Forcep just pulls it out and lets it clink down onto the operating table.

“They really did a number on this armor,” he says. “The tensile strength must be too high for standard medical tools.”

“We used an industrial strength separator for his chest plates,” Meritus tells him. “Try a torch instead. But be careful with the circuitry underneath. If it gets slagged, we won’t be able to establish a firm connection.”

One of the technicians hands Forcep a torch, and he attempts to cut through the closed port. He only manages to get through the first layer of armor before the bright ring of dissolving metal suddenly goes dark, sending sparks skittering uselessly over the operating table. Forcep deactivates the torch and stands back, running his hand over the area in a scan.

“Hand me the nitrocutter,” he says, after a moment.

“Dicyanoacetylene?” Meritus asks, coming over to examine the port himself. “You’ll cause internal damage.”

“Well, the cyanogen torch was ineffective, and it shouldn’t have been,” Forcep says. “We already know the rest of his armor’s been illegally reinforced with industrial-grade materials. He must have an additional layer on the ports.”

Meritus nods permission, and Forcep goes in with the nitrocutter. Sentinel leans forward in interest as the thick layers of armor are breached, and Forcep peels them away to reveal the port underneath.

“There!” Forcep says, sounding satisfied. “Just twelve more to go.”

Meritus laughs at that. “Let’s get him properly formatted, first,” he says.

The two medical technicians rush to get Soundwave prepared, unplugging the scanner from the power regulator and getting his chest plates unlocked and finally closed. Optimus watches in horror, commingled disconcertingly with Sentinel’s sense of vicious anticipation, as Meritus brings Soundwave back to consciousness and promptly plugs into his newly-revealed port, wordlessly ending Soundwave’s renewed struggles.

“Initiating transformation sequence,” Meritus says, once the technicians have released Soundwave from his bonds. Soundwave lies unmoving on the table for a moment more before the transformation sequence begins, folding Soundwave into his alternate mode.

“Alright,” Meritus says, once it’s clear that the transformation is complete. “Get him prepped for installation.” He indicates a pile of tubing and cables on one of the equipment tables. “I’ll inform Polygonus that we’re ready to have him moved off core support and into his new… residence.”

The technicians start splicing in coolant tubing and an energon line while Forcep methodically cuts away Soundwave’s remaining port covers. Optimus realizes, belatedly, that this isn’t a cassette modification at all. This is—this is how Sentinel got Soundwave _under control_. He had Soundwave tortured and modified and _installed_ in his communications center, forcibly reformatted into a featureless machine. The recording Optimus watched in the archives hadn’t been a mission gone wrong. He’d seen it himself, but he hadn’t understood—hadn’t been _able_ to understand. Even with full system resources, Optimus’s speculation unit never could have generated this explanation.

Now, slowly, horrifically, Sentinel’s vision is taking shape in Optimus’s mind. Sentinel was planning—was trying to create—mechs without faces, without voices, without even _core-reactive lighting routines_. Miners, soldiers, lab assistants, mechs used as transports, tactical modules, data sticks, and all of them kept compliant and alone, unable to make even the most basic emotional connection—living, thinking, feeling mechs being used as equipment, as _machines_.

That strikes something in Sentinel’s memory, and suddenly, Optimus knows—not just machines. _Disposables_. Sentinel planned to address the problem of obsoletion by producing mechs that no one would miss. He wanted—an _entire class_ of non-emotive Cybertronians, built only for the convenience of others, and meant to be _disposed of _when they were no longer convenient to support.

Optimus’s emotional subsystem suddenly runs out of nonessential resources to claim, and his only warning is a brief alert in frontal processing before he gasps awake, the Matrix releasing its hold on his sensory input. Optical input winks out, leaving Optimus in the dark as full system resources are forcibly redirected to process the overwhelming horror of it. His reality matrix is issuing wildly fluctuating conclusions, unable to integrate the full extent of the atrocity that Sentinel had planned.

“Optimus? Optimus, are you in here?” Vaguely, Optimus recognizes the sound of Ratchet calling for him, but is unable to spare the necessary power to his vocal unit for a response. He realizes that he’s on the ground, now; his knee servos must have given out at some point. He feels almost unbearably hot, his systems struggling with the sudden power demand.

Ratchet’s footsteps grow louder, then speed up. “Optimus! Are you alright?” He crouches down beside Optimus and pulls out a scanner without waiting for an answer.

Optimus doesn’t know how long he lies there before he manages to divert enough energy to his motivator to jumpstart motion. A little unsteadily, he lays a hand on Ratchet’s arm.

“I am alright, old friend,” he says. His voice is so shot through with static it’s hardly recognizable.

“You’re not,” Ratchet says, grimly. He pings a port for access, and Optimus lets him plug the scanner in without argument.

Optimus had been rebuilt to bear the Matrix that would have destroyed Orion Pax. And all this time, he’s thought the rebuild was complete—even now, when he manages to pull Orion’s memories out of long-term storage, he experiences them as a stranger, farther away than he experiences even _Sentinel’s_ memories. But he wonders now if maybe some of Orion has been left in him, after all—if all this time he’s been thinking of the Decepticons the way Orion had, as workers grown bored and tired of their lot.

Certainly Optimus has been laboring under the delusion that the Decepticons might be _convinced_, somehow, that if only he could find the right words, the right moment, there was some sort of tipping point at which they might be persuaded. He realizes now that there’s no such thing. Even if Megatron _had_ been torturing Soundwave, it wouldn’t have mattered, because—whatever was being done to him, it couldn’t be worse than what the Autobots have _already done_.

“You should have gone with the others,” Optimus tells Ratchet, when he’s able to get his vocalizer functioning again. “It’s not safe here.”

“Your emotional subsystem is siphoning resources from your autonomic supports,” Ratchet says. “It should settle on its own in three or four astrominutes. If it doesn’t, I can program a routine to combat the effects, but you’ll need either a hard reboot or a full recharge cycle to integrate it.”

Optimus shakes his head. His long-range auditory monitoring routine is already issuing alerts, and it won’t be long before Ratchet’s systems can detect it as well.

“What is this place?” Ratchet asks, looking around curiously now that Optimus has been attended to. “I thought Megatron had destroyed all of the old temples by now.”

“This is the Hall of Ascension,” Optimus says. “Only the Matrix can grant entry to this place—it’s been sealed since Sentinel’s destruction.”

Ratchet starts to respond, then looks up in sudden alarm at the heavy clattering of approaching Decepticons. With his autonomics still functioning erratically, Optimus assumes manual control of his ventilation system, drawing the Hall’s cooler air into internal circulation at an increased rate in an attempt to reduce his internal temperature.

Megatron stops in the doorway when he arrives, optics glowing cold red as he evaluates the scene. His shadow is nearly long enough to reach Optimus, the backlighting from the sanctuary strong enough to render his features nearly indistinguishable.

“There you are, Optimus,” Megatron says. “I’ve been looking for you.” Almost lazily, he raises his cannon and fires. Even at low power, it leaves the statue of Sentinel half-slagged and melting down one side.

“Megatron,” Optimus says. He uses one arm to push himself into a sitting position, still feeling heavy and sluggish. His internal temperature is reducing, but his systems are struggling to regain autonomic function. Ratchet, brave and fierce to the very end, steps in front of him with his scanner out like a weapon.

“Stand aside,” Optimus tells him, gently. He can tell that Ratchet would dearly like to argue, but he moves aside without commentary.

“Get the medic out of the way,” Megatron commands, as Starscream comes slinking up behind him.

Recognizing an immediate threat to his life, and to Ratchet’s, Optimus’s threat-evaluation module finally kicks his motivator into gear. His weapons systems online before he even stands all the way up. But behind Megatron and Starscream, Soundwave, Skywarp, and Thundercracker are all approaching, and Ratchet is a non-combatant.

“Go ahead and say your last words,” Starscream taunts, as Megatron’s cannon hums up to full power.

Optimus runs a full vent cycle, then manually powers off his combat system. Ratchet turns his head to look at him, alarmed.

Optimus puts a hand on his shoulder. “Stay where you are,” he says, and then he steps away to make direct optic contact with Megatron.

“Well?” Megatron says. “Go ahead, then. Let’s hear it.”

Optimus pops open an access panel, revealing a port in his abdomen.

“Ugh!” Starscream screeches, jumping back like Optimus had just propositioned _him_. “Put that away, you freak.”

“What’s he doing?” Skywarp asks, crowding up behind Starscream to look. Soundwave comes to a stop a few meters behind him.

“What _are_ you doing?” Megatron asks. His cannon has stopped charging, his system clearly having redirected those resources to his reality matrix. Optimus could take advantage of the pause to attempt an escape—Ratchet, tensing up beside him, is clearly expecting him to—but he forces himself to remain where he is. His tactical coprocessor is churning out possibilities, but Optimus is still aching with what he’s discovered, and he can’t—he has to see it for himself.

Megatron is still staring at his bared port, his facial expression wavering wildly between confusion and anger.

Optimus takes a step forward. “Megatron, what the Matrix has revealed to me—”

“Do you take me for a fool, Prime?” Megatron interrupts, deciding on anger after all. “I’d rather expose my neural processes to _Starscream_.” He raises his cannon, restarting the charging process where it had paused.

“Execution not recommended,” Soundwave says, from behind him. “Use of Matrix: required to deactivate planetary weapons systems.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing?” Megatron demands, turning to look at him.

“Negative. Signal originates from Primal chambers.”

“You said the signal originated from beneath the Capitol,” Optimus interjects.

“Access to archives required,” Soundwave says.

“You reported that the mission was completed,” Megatron says, voice raising in irritation.

“Alternate mission completed. Details forthcoming.” Soundwave tilts his head toward Optimus significantly.

“They had better be,” Megatron growls. He looks over suspiciously at Optimus, then at his bared port. “Cover that up, Prime. You’re coming with us.”

Optimus’s combat systems come roaring back on at _that_, and an energy weapon slides into his hand out of his subspace without conscious thought. “I don’t think so, Megatron,” he says, and prepares for a firefight. The Decepticons are blocking the entrance, but if he can manage to unseat one of the statues towering over them—

Suddenly, the partially-closed doors slam open, and Ultra Magnus comes barreling in, tossing Skywarp and Thundercracker both out of his way when they attempt to block his path. Arcee comes rushing in after, with Kup, Springer and Hot Rod all coming in hot behind her.

Ultra Magnus runs to place himself between Optimus and the fighting, taking several quick shots at Megatron and pulling Optimus along to take cover behind the statue of Nexus Prime. “Optimus,” he says, keeping his gun carefully targeted at Megatron. “I received your call for assistance.”

It’s a little late—they issued the call immediately after crash-landing on Soundwave—but the timing is just about perfect. “Get Ratchet out of here,” Optimus says. “I’ll engage Megatron.”

Optimus ducks out from behind the statue to return fire, then just barely dodges an almost full-powered blast from Megatron’s cannon. The resulting explosion takes out Nexus Prime’s statue and a massive chunk of the Hall’s outer wall. Optimus quickly turns and takes aim at the edges of the destruction, clearing a wide enough exit for even Ultra Magnus to barrel through.

“Autobots, retreat!” Optimus commands. He turns his attention back to Megatron. The seekers are all hampered by the close quarters, and Soundwave has been reduced to grappling attacks, unable to use his sonic weaponry without bringing the structure down on all of their heads. Between Ultra Magnus’s team and the constraints on the Decepticons, Optimus’s tactical unit is urging him to remain and press the fight. He manually redirects it to identifying defensive actions to maintain clean escape route, and ducks out just behind all of the others, only taking some minor damage to his armor.

Not even a full three astroseconds after he gets outside, though, the ground rocks with a sudden impact, and the roof of the partially-standing building in front of them comes sliding down onto the street.

“Follow me!” Arcee yells, darting in front of Ultra Magnus, and she leads them down an alley that appears to dead-end where a once-towering starscraper now lies, long since fallen in the early stages of their war.

Arcee, unfazed by the obstacle, takes them through a cleverly-disguised section of the starscraper, ducking under the remains of a balcony and pulling a hollow durasteel support out of the way, demonstrating that the building only appears to be fully collapsed into itself.

“I’ve been saving this passage as an emergency escape route,” she tells them. “I don’t think Shockwave knows about it yet, so we should be good for a little while, if we can figure out why the weapons system is going off again. Best to get out of the area quickly, though.”

“Megatron was surprised that the system remained active,” Optimus says, “so I doubt it’s under Decepticon control. Fortunately, Soundwave let slip the location of the true control center—we need to get to the Primal chambers. Now, if we can, while the Decepticons expect us to be retreating back to base.”

“The automated missiles are not Decepticon in origin?” Ultra Magnus asks.

“No,” Optimus tells him. “Somehow, the Primacy’s planetary weapons system has been activated, and it’s targeting all atmospheric flight, including flight powered by Skywarp’s warp drive. I suspect that was the source of the explosion we just avoided,” he adds, to Arcee.

“Wait,” Hot Rod interrupts, “those are _our_ missiles? How come we have them on then?”

Kup leans forward and places a hand on Hot Rod’s shoulder. “Pay attention, lad. No one’s controllin’ the missiles right now. We have to go try and get ‘em turned off.”

“I don’t know,” Arcee says. “It could be a trap. How do we know the Decepticons won’t just be waiting to ambush us there? Soundwave already lied about the signal location once.”

“It’s a risk, but a necessary one,” Optimus says. “As long as the planetary weapons system remains active, we are trapped here on Cybertron.”

“So are the Decepticons,” Arcee points out.

“Shockwave will figure out how to hijack the system eventually,” Kup says. “There’s no sense in sittin’ around waitin’ for it.”

Even Arcee can’t argue with that, and she and Springer go to scout a safe path. As soon as they’ve left, Ratchet whirls on Optimus.

“Before we go anywhere, _you_ need another systems check,” Ratchet says. “It’s barely been fifteen astrominutes since you were losing autonomic function.”

Ultra Magnus jerks forward, looking intensely concerned, but Optimus waves him off. “A side effect of using the Matrix in combination with a relic in the Hall of Ascension,” he explains.

Ratchet looks skeptical, but doesn’t argue, just motions for Optimus to sit down. “I need to evaluate the function of your critical components, and I don’t have the necessary equipment,” Ratchet explains, as he reaches for the primary data port on the back of Optimus’s neck and pings for access. “It would be best to plug in directly.”

Optimus nods agreement, and Ultra Magnus and Kup look away politely. Kup reaches a hand back and slaps it on the top of Hot Rod’s head.

“Hey!” Hot Rod protests, but Kup just twists his hand until Hot Rod gives in and faces the other direction. The three of them move to the other side of the small space and Kup starts a tale of dubious authenticity about being trapped in a burning mine on Septus-19, keeping Hot Rod occupied and giving Optimus the illusion of privacy.

Ratchet plugs in, not wasting any time, and Optimus grants him systems access. It’s slightly uncomfortable to have Ratchet’s presence tingling in the back of his hardware, but Ratchet has a gentle touch, and Optimus can just barely feel him accessing his autonomic logs.

Ratchet leaves a medical evaluation routine running and immediately feeds a series of problems through Optimus’s logic unit, running a tracer on Optimus’s reality matrix and emotional subsystem at the same time.

Optimus winces, and reassigns resources to his logic unit so it can properly evaluate the conditions Ratchet is feeding it. “This doesn’t feel routine, Ratchet,” he says aloud.

Connected as they are, Ratchet can’t quite hide the flash of guilty concern. “Your reaction was unusual,” is all he says, but Optimus sees what he’s referring to right away: Optimus _propositioning_ Megatron, and apparently meaning it.

“Your emotional subsystem preempted an unsafe level of resources,” Ratchet says, quietly. “Enough to undermine autonomic function. That can indicate a more serious underlying malfunction in the subsystem itself, and there’s a potential for system shock and damage to other critical components.”

Optimus doesn’t _feel_ damaged, but he doesn’t argue; Ratchet won’t be satisfied until he’s confirmed for himself, and Optimus has never been in the habit of disputing medically advised procedures. But while he doesn’t believe he ever would have made such an offer without the impetus of the systems upset, he doesn’t know that he would take it back now, either.

Ratchet concludes his examination and reluctantly gives Optimus a clean bill of health. “Try to avoid any more systems strain,” he warns. “Keep a close eye on your emotional processes.”

Optimus assures Ratchet that he will, and they join the others to wait for Arcee.

“Where are Bumblebee and Wheeljack hiding?” Ratchet asks, as he sits down. “There’s a good chance we’ll need Wheeljack’s help to disable the weapons system.”

“Not far,” Magnus assures him. “Arcee and Springer should collect them on the way back—we separated as a temporary precaution, so they could seek out Elita One in the event that our rescue mission went poorly.”

“Have you had any recent communication with Elita?” Optimus asks. “We’ve been trying to establish contact since we arrived on Cybertron without luck.”

Ultra Magnus shakes his head. “Our long-range communications have been disrupted for the past six cycles.”

A recent development, then, and coinciding with Soundwave’s arrival on-planet. Optimus starts to question him further—he still hasn’t determined the reason for the Decepticons’ presence on Cybertron—but Springer ducks his head into their temporary shelter and announces that he and Arcee are back.

Kup and Hot Rod follow Springer out into the street, but Ultra Magnus motions for Optimus to stay back.

“I couldn’t help but overhear,” Magnus says, leaning in close. “I apologize for the intrusion, but Optimus, are you—is there anything you need?”

Optimus shakes his head. “Thank you, Magnus, but I am recovered,” he says, but Ratchet interrupts.

“What he needs is a vacation,” Ratchet says. “And possibly a regular interface partner.”

“Ratchet!” Optimus admonishes.

“It’d help clear out some of that stress load,” Ratchet says, undeterred. He shoots a significant look at Ultra Magnus.

Ultra Magnus shuffles around a little, clearly mortified, and Ratchet takes pity on him. “Alright, come on, let’s go,” Ratchet says, ushering them forward to join the others.

Arcee takes them in a twisting path around the Capitol to what remains of the Council building, where the Primal chambers are located. The Council building itself is destroyed, and most of the underground levels have collapsed. The Primal chambers themselves, however, are located on the far side of the first subterranean level, away from the worst of the bombardment, and Arcee quickly identifies a stable entrance.

Unfortunately, this door has no remaining power source, rendering Optimus’s encryption key useless. It is, however, significantly less well-armored than the inner doors will be. They have only just started cutting through it when Optimus’s threat-evaluation systems detect the sounds of approaching Decepticons.

“Incoming,” Optimus says. “We’ll have to work quickly, but I don’t think we can avoid a firefight.”

“Soundwave said the system could only be deactivated with the Matrix,” Ratchet says. “I doubt he would have lied about that to Megatron. You’ll have to go down there.”

“We’ll hold them off,” Magnus says, grimly. “Hopefully the system can be disabled quickly.”

“Got it,” Wheeljack grunts, as the door collapses down into the room below. Optimus jumps down through the hole, Wheeljack and Ratchet both following after.

This close, even a standard communications suite should be able to trace the missile signals, and Wheeljack pulls out a short-range signal detector which he had helpfully developed while waiting in hiding with Bumblebee. They follow its guidance through a series of increasingly well-armored doors which fortunately _do_ have the power to respond to Optimus’s encryption key. It isn’t long, though, before he hears energy weapons discharging outside.

“This way,” Wheeljack says, and they speed down a long, ornately decorated hallway, which ends in a featureless wall. “The signal is taking us straight through this wall,” Wheeljack says. “It’s stronger here than it’s been anywhere else.”

Optimus rests his hand on the wall, letting the Matrix’s power come to the surface, and smooth durasteel slides aside to reveal a hidden security access panel. It pings him a request for his encryption key.

“I don’t like the look of this,” Ratchet says, when the wall recedes into the floor, revealing a long, sterile-looking hallway.

Optimus doesn’t like the look of it either, especially once they’ve all stepped inside and the wall slides back up behind them, sealing them in. Wheeljack’s detector is still pointing them forward, though, so they continue on.

Optimus peers into every room they pass, but the entire facility has been cleared out. There is only the occasional cable or mounting bracket jutting out of the wall where equipment was once kept to show that the rooms were ever in use at all. It feels more ominous than it should; he knows that it is not the facility from Sentinel’s memories, but his systems are flagging it as similar enough to raise constant image comparisons.

“Alright, it looks like the signal is coming from in here,” Wheeljack says, when they get to the closed door at the end of the hallway.

Optimus unlocks the door and lets others inside. Ratchet goes in first, and Optimus nearly knocks him over when he comes to a sudden stop just inside the threshold.

“Ratchet, what—” Optimus starts to ask, and then he sees it. This room, unlike the others, isn’t empty at all. There’s a control center recessed into one wall, and at the bottom of that wall is a _mech_, a thick flat panel where his face should be, his body pinned to the floor by massive durasteel spikes inserted into his frame at the joints.

Ratchet jerks out of his shock and goes to him, but the dead silence of the room and the empty tubes attached to the poor mech’s mutilated body make it clear that they’re too late, if not nearly eight million years too late.

“His emergency locator is still active,” Ratchet says, reaching to inspect one of the tubes attached to a fuel intake port. His voice has gone staticy, rough with distress. “It’s not broadcasting a distress call, but it responded to my ping. His internal reactor must have finally gone out four, five thousand years ago, at the most.”

Optimus sits down hard. His emotional subsystem is whirring with the realization that—he could have come here at any time. The encryption key was a false obstacle; if Optimus had put any amount of effort into it at all, he could have entered the Hall of Ascension the day he received the Matrix, and generated his own key. But instead, he kept his head in the sand, hiding from what Sentinel had done, from what the Senate and Council and the whole lineage of Primes before him had done, while this mech slowly starved to death, left alone in the dark for_ eight million years_.

He’s vaguely aware of Ratchet and Wheeljack speaking, voices raised in alarm, but he is unable to respond. His emotional subsystem is once again preempting resources faster than his systems can compensate for, leaving him reeling.

At the beginning of the war, Optimus had sent Megatron repeated invitations to begin peace talks. Megatron had dismissed them all out of hand, and eventually Optimus had quit sending them. But of course Megatron hadn’t believed him. He’d thought Optimus was no different from the senators he’d just destroyed.

And Optimus _had_ fought for them; he’d been appalled at their destruction, and at Sentinel’s. He’d thought the senators and councillors could be brought to reason, that they were simply too far removed from the reality of the common people. He’d thought a peaceful resolution was at hand, and that Megatron had rejected it in favor of conquest, that Megatron was—violent, irrational, _savage_.

Optimus can feel his systems cycling back into panic, non-essential autonomics already losing function, and essential autonomics hemorrhaging critically-needed power.

A massive impact rocks through the facility, sending debris tumbling down from the ceiling. The environmental threat pushes Optimus out of his stupor and into combat mode involuntarily, wrestling resources back from his emotional subsystem before shock can set in again.

“Optimus!” Ratchet says, urgently. His optics are flaring nearly white with distress. “You almost—you need to maintain combat mode, no matter what happens. Go in now and manually adjust your threat evaluation routines to maximum sensitivity. Once we get to safety, I’ll put temporary blocks on your power distribution to keep you stable until we reach an actual infirmary.”

“We need to get that system deactivated and get out of here now,” Wheeljack interrupts. “The Decepticons just blew up the entrance—it’ll take them a few minutes to dig their way in through the rubble, but that’s all we have.”

“We can’t deactivate the system,” Optimus says, suddenly certain. His tactical unit and emotional subsystem are drawing joint power, forming the bare outline of a plan—but Ratchet and Wheeljack can’t be here for it. “Wheeljack, do you have explosives capable of blowing an exit out of the outer walls?”

“It’d have to be a ceiling, but yes,” Wheeljack says, slowly.

“Alright. Take Ratchet and go. I’ll handle Megatron.”

Wheeljack stares for a moment, then abruptly says, “I’ll have to go set the explosives first. Ratchet, wait here,” and takes off.

“I’m not leaving you,” Ratchet says. “You nearly slid into _neural collapse_ right in front of us, Optimus.” His voice breaks, and he looks away.

“It’s an order,” Optimus says, gently. “If you’re still here when Megatron arrives, he won’t hesitate to use you against me.”

“You’re not in any condition to fight Megatron right now,” Ratchet tells him.

“I know,” Optimus says, and he truly isn’t, if not necessarily for the reasons Ratchet is thinking. “And I’m not planning to fight him. But I need you to trust me on this, Ratchet.”

Ratchet nods, clearly reluctant, but when Wheeljack comes back for him he follows without protest, only glancing back over his shoulder once as he leaves. Optimus watches them go, then walks back down the long hallway to wait. It isn’t long before Megatron emerges from the rubble, covered in dust and sending debris flying.

“Very convenient, Prime,” Megatron says, dusting a particularly large chuck of wall off his shoulder pauldrons. “You’re exactly where I needed you.”

Behind him, other Decepticons start coming through the path Megatron made. There’s no sign of Ultra Magnus or the others; Optimus can only hope they’ve managed to escape.

Megatron comes swaggering forward, cannon raised, fully charged this time. “You know what I want from you,” he says. “Soundwave, bring us to the control room.”

Optimus takes a deep breath and, against medical advice, deactivates his combat systems.

“Megatron, what the Matrix showed me—what I’ve seen here—I fear I’ve… misunderstood your position,” Optimus admits. “And I cannot in good conscience keep on as we have been.”

It’s risky, but Optimus knows that it has to be done. Before, Optimus had offered a data connection without true consideration of the consequences, but he still—it’s still the best option. The _only_ option. And if it becomes necessary, he feels confident in his ability to prevent Megatron from accessing any truly sensitive information.

“What_ the Matrix_ showed you,” Megatron sneers. “I’m not interested in more Autobot fabrications.”

Optimus waits, but Megatron doesn’t back down. “The Matrix showed me the circumstances behind Soundwave’s creation,” Optimus says, finally, glancing briefly over at Soundwave. “And it revealed the details of Sentinel’s… grander plan.”

“Do you think I need to hear every sob story?” Megatron asks, optics blazing red. “We’ll crush you regardless.”

“Megatron,” Optimus says quietly, not rising to the bait. “I think you _do_ need to see this. And I need...” he trails off, unable to articulate what, exactly, he needs from Megatron in terms that Decepticons would understand.

“Let me show you the control room,” Optimus says, finally, and turns and walks toward it.

The Decepticons follow without argument—Optimus is, after all, doing what they’d wanted in the first place—but when they get into the control room Soundwave comes to a sudden halt, staring down at the poor mech pinned to the floor.

“Gross,” Rumble says, coming up behind him. “I told you Autobots are weird,” he adds, looking back at Thundercracker.

Megatron turns to Optimus. “What’s the point of this?” he asks. “If you thought to shock me with the depths of Autobot depravity, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“Just let me show you,” Optimus says. “It would be an—informational interface.” He looks down at the data access panel on his arm and slides back the cover, exposing the data port there. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought of—doing this.” Optimus himself hadn’t until recently, but he feels certain that _Megatron_ has at some point.

“Ugh,” Starscream says. “This again?”

“Yeah,” Skywarp echoes, giggling. “Desperate, much?”

“Shut up,” Megatron tells them, optics fixed on Optimus’s exposed port.

He stares for long enough that Optimus’s combat systems start requesting system resources again, but Optimus holds still, waiting.

“Fine,” Megatron says, abruptly. He seems surprised by his own response, but he doesn’t take it back; instead, he gestures for Optimus to come closer. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

Optimus comes to him, and Megatron doesn’t waste a second, dragging Optimus close and pulling his arm up into his grasp, staring down at the data port there. He smirks when Optimus tenses, and rubs a thumb around the rim of Optimus’s port before dipping it in roughly. Optimus chokes down a sound at the unexpectedly activated pleasure circuitry a moment too late, and glares at Megatron. “That is _not_ what we agreed on,” he says.

“Oh, is that not what you wanted?” Megatron asks, affecting innocence. He presses his thumb down again, brushing against the delicate components, and Optimus shudders into his touch, unable to stop himself from leaning in. Megatron isn’t much larger than Optimus, but like this he feels massive, the steady thrumming of his internal reactor suddenly thunderous, and Optimus vents heavily into the solid wall of his chest. It’s been a long time since Optimus has had this kind of intimacy—the last time was after he’d had to call the general retreat from Cybertron.

The data access panel on Megatron’s wrist pops open, and Optimus stares at it until Megatron’s other hand wraps around his jaw and tilts his head up forcefully. Megatron’s optics are blazing a dark red as he leans in, fitting their mouths together in a kiss. He shouldn’t—this was meant to be an _informational_ interface—but Optimus opens up easily anyway, pushing his surface emotions through the data contacts there. Megatron grants reciprocal access with a groan.

Triumph and lust and pleasure all come rushing through, overpowering but not quite drowning out the anger and cruelty underneath. Optimus moans, going still under the onslaught. It’s more than he ever would have anticipated from a restricted surface-level data connection.

“That’s disgusting,” Starscream sneers. “I’m not watching this.”

Optimus comes back to himself with a hot rush of embarrassment, and his battle mask snaps shut automatically.

“No, you’re not,” Megatron growls. “Get out of here. Make yourself useful and go assist Shockwave. You, too,” he adds, waving around at the other Decepticons. Everyone files back out except for Soundwave, who after a moment’s hesitation retreats silently just out of the room and into the hallway. Megatron shoots him a dangerous look, but turns back to Optimus, apparently having decided to tolerate Soundwave’s presence.

Megatron taps on Optimus’s mask expectantly, and Optimus opens up for him, expecting him to return to their kiss. Instead, Megatron leans in and plugs his data cable into Optimus’s port without warning.

Megatron’s entire personality comes flooding through their connection in less than a microsecond, overwhelming Optimus’s hardware. It becomes immediately obvious that Optimus should not have been so confident in his ability to restrict Megatron’s access. Megatron is—unstoppable. Optimus jerks forward, plugging in and establishing a reciprocal connection automatically, but it does nothing to stop the tidal flow of data. Megatron’s furious tearing at Optimus’s processes leaves Optimus stunned, unable to even retreat over their connection onto Megatron’s hardware.

Megatron rifles through Optimus’s planning queue, throwing out mission statistics and disrupting long-term analyses as he draws out information about strategic plans and available resources, feeding it all directly into his own massive logic unit for pragmatic strategic analysis. Optimus feels the exact moment that the unit returns an initial conclusion, although he can’t see it himself; Megatron’s sudden rush of joy and victory rockets through his systems.

“Let me see,” Optimus manages, and horribly, terribly, Megatron _does_. Optimus has been successfully avoiding the logical conclusion in his own strategic analysis, but Megatron’s processor lays the truth bare with cold, ruthless certainty: the Autobots have _already lost._ All they’ve been doing is—putting off the inevitable. And they can’t even do that much, anymore; Optimus sees now, grasping at reciprocal access made suddenly available, that Megatron hasn’t just captured him—with the codes Soundwave brought him from the archives, Shockwave has unlocked Cyberton's reactors and is busily pulling thousands of Decepticon warriors out of stasis at this exact moment, preparing for the final assault on Earth. They’ve even managed to capture Elita and her team. The only good news is that Ultra Magnus and the others did manage to get away, and even _that_ seems only temporary.

Megatron ruthlessly wrenches deep access permissions out of Optimus’s recovering systems, all the while leaning in for hungry, open mouthed kisses, his hands gripping roughly at Optimus’s armor, interspersing pleasure and the violence of their connection. Optimus can hardly withstand the onslaught, much less control it, and out of desperation starts tearing at _Megatron’s_ processes.

What he finds is—worse than he’d ever imagined. He can feel Megatron’s reaction to Sentinel’s memories, to the information Optimus uncovered in the archive, and terribly, Megatron isn’t even _surprised_. He didn’t know about the disposables, but he hadn’t needed to. Optimus is only picking up hints of the brutish nightmare of a life Megatron had before ending up in the gladiatorial pits, but it’s enough to understand that—Sentinel’s vision had _already_ been realized. Megatron is nothing if not emotive—sometimes it seems to Optimus that he acts purely out of emotional fury and nothing else—but he’d been kept chained and laboring in the dark just the same. No one would have demanded an inquest if he’d gone missing, once his function had been completed.

Optimus had known of the corruption, if not the details, and he’d still been righteously certain that he would succeed in creating a just and peaceful world where all the Autobots before him had failed. But Megatron doesn’t believe in a moral reality _at all_. He hates Sentinel with all the revolutionary fury that led him to start the war in the first place, but he doesn’t—he doesn’t believe there’s any real truth to peace, or justice, or love. For Megatron, those things exist only as convenient excuses. And terribly—it’s _not_ true, but Optimus sees now how Megatron has come to believe it, after the horrors inflicted on him and others in secret and in hate.

“Ha!” Megatron says, endlessly amused by Optimus’s grief and horror. “Soundwave, come over here. You’ll enjoy this.”

Soundwave comes over silently and plugs into the port that Megatron offers. Optimus starts, jerking back from their connection and nearly pulling Megatron’s cable out of his own port.

“What are you doing?” Optimus asks, shocked anew at Megatron’s nearly limitless audacity, although he really shouldn’t be. “You can’t just invite a third party into our interface without asking.”

Megatron laughs, and Soundwave suddenly comes rushing over their connection. He doesn’t—it doesn’t feel anything like Megatron’s initial invasion, but Soundwave isn’t gentle, either, rifling through Optimus’s processes without regard for Optimus’s feelings on the matter. Without a reciprocal connection, it’s an uncomfortable experience; Optimus is simultaneously unable to feel him and intensely aware of his presence.

Megatron guides Soundwave to the memories Optimus had shared, where Optimus’s emotional routines are still tangled up trying to make sense of it all. Optimus _does_ feel his sudden sense of amusement at Optimus’s concern over his grossly injured ports, and at Optimus’s vague plan to offer him asylum with the Autobots. But when he gets to the memories Optimus experienced through the Matrix, Optimus is made suddenly aware that _this_ is the product of Sentinel’s grand plan. Soundwave, who experiences emotions as truly and as deeply as any Cybertronian, but has never—has never had a face.

Soundwave has never flashed his optics in anger, or exchanged looks across a room. He’s never gotten home from a long day and lowered his mask. He’s never—smiled at his creations, or shared a kiss with a partner, felt the sudden rush of their emotions across his data contacts. He can’t even share an interface with the hardware he _does_ have, because he _destroyed_ _his own ports_.

Optimus turns away, fighting the sudden urge to purge fuel. Soundwave, though, seems bemused more than anything. He sends a clear impression back through their one-way connection, somewhat painfully: Does Optimus believe that Soundwave is too damaged to fight?

Optimus can do nothing but reject Soundwave’s question out of hand. Optimus understands now, with the certainly of the Matrix behind him, that Sentinel was never able to reproduce Soundwave’s construction because Soundwave was the one spark out of a billion that could support such a horrifically limited frame without imploding in on itself. Optimus himself never would have survived it. Soundwave, though, is still here ten million years later, has managed to carve out a life and a family for himself in the middle of unending war and destruction.

Optimus runs a long exhaust cycle. The truth is, it doesn’t matter that Soundwave, or Megatron, or _any_ of the Decepticons are strong enough. It doesn’t matter that a Cybernetic brain won’t initialize unless the frame can meet the demands of the spark. Because Sentinel—Sentinel chose this _for_ him. For all of them. And he did it to make them _less_. 

After a little while, Soundwave withdraws from the connection, but he doesn’t get up right away.

“Megatron: suggestion,” he says, after a long moment. “Planetary resources increased exponentially. Estimate from Shockwave: current reserves can provide sufficient fuel for all Decepticon warriors over period of fifteen point eight-seven vorn, assuming limited population expansion. Addition of Optimus Prime, Autobots: population increase of two point one-three percent. This figure, within acceptable parameters.”

Megatron doesn’t say anything, but Optimus can feel his sudden surge of confusion. Soundwave gets up, then, and returns to his position standing silently at the side of the room. Megatron watches him go, then suddenly turns and forces his way through Optimus’s emotional logs, trying to find what Soundwave had seen. Optimus can offer him nothing beyond his final realization:

Orion Pax had been created as a simple laborer, privileged and well-fueled, certainly, but never meant for any real responsibility. He never could have imagined the terrible inheritance Optimus received. Optimus had been rebuilt for it, but he hadn’t truly understood that the burden of the Matrix, of the Primacy, is that Sentinel’s crimes—and Nova’s, and Solus’s, back until the very first Prime to take the Matrix—are Optimus’s as well. Megatron has committed his own atrocities, but Optimus understands now that they stand on equally energon-soaked ground.

Megatron rubs a thumb across Optimus’s cheek, and their connection solidifies with the sudden weight of his resolve. In the background, Optimus can feel Megatron’s brilliant, incredibly powerful mind shifting resources towards—having this, having _Optimus_. And now that Megatron has decided, his easy confidence and certainty comes rushing back between them, bolstering Optimus, too.

It had been easy to think of Megatron as a monster. But Megatron isn’t a monster after all; he’s cruel, he’s violent, he’s inscrutable, but he’s also—a revolutionary. And they can make this work.

“I won’t disable the system for you,” Optimus says. “But I won’t try to escape, either. Let’s have a—a ceasefire. And negotiate terms of surrender.”

It’s not something Optimus would have considered, before. He would have continued fighting until the very last Autobot’s internal reactor had gone cold. And Megatron _doesn’t_ deserve peace; the atrocities he’s committed would bring him death in any court of law. But Optimus’s righteousness has bought them nothing but eight million years of war. To keep fighting now, when Optimus feels certain that the possibility of peace is closer than it ever has been before, would be nothing but folly.

Megatron finally releases their connection, and Optimus leans back from him almost reluctantly. Megatron, though, gets up without a word, and goes over to the mech that Sentinel had apparently had involuntarily _installed_, a gross reproduction of what he’d done to Soundwave. Megatron leans down and in one quick motion rips the metal plating off the mech’s face.

It’s—Polygonus. Optimus jerks back in surprise; he hadn’t recognized Polygonus’s body, but his face is unmistakable.

“I suppose Sentinel wasn’t impressed with his results after all,” Optimus says dryly, looking over at Soundwave and surprising himself with the dark humor.

“I suppose not,” Megatron says, after a beat of his own surprise, and then laughs.

It’s no less than Polygonus deserved, but Optimus still aches to see it. He turns away, but he suddenly has to ask—the one thing he still doesn’t understand from Soundwave’s history.

“What _were_ you doing when you escaped from Sentinel?” Optimus asks. “Who helped you?”

“Soundwave’s fuel requirements: high. Gladiatorial circuit best source of necessary income,” Soundwave says. “Armor upgrades provided by Shockwave in exchange for stolen research material and equipment.”

Optimus nods, seeing the irony of it: the initial agents of Sentinel’s destruction, brought together by Sentinel’s own actions long before the whispers of revolution.

“Let’s go interrupt the little rescue party that I’m sure is forming outside,” Megatron says, interrupting, “and then we’ll begin negotiations.”

Optimus agrees, and Megatron suddenly leans close to him, a possessive hand landing on his arm.

“I don’t know about you,” Megatron says, “but I’m finding myself quite motivated to _finish_. We got fairly derailed by the political discussions, earlier.” He runs his thumb over Optimus’s closed data access panel, smirking.

Optimus’s systems suddenly ratchet up his operating temperature by about fifteen degrees, running hot with mortification; worse still is the realization that Optimus isn’t exactly opposed. Megatron just laughs, and lets go of Optimus’s arm to barrel through the destruction he made of the entrance.

#

After the first round of negotiations—which were perhaps made unnecessarily extensive by the presence of Starscream and Ultra Magnus—they take a brief recess while they wait for Shockwave to release Elita and the others from their involuntary stasis. Optimus had insisted on their freedom as a condition for any further concessions. Of course, he’d already agreed to remain on Cybertron himself, and to maintain a complete ceasefire, but he’d gotten a guarantee of safe conduct for himself and his people in exchange.

On the surface, most of the Autobots are sitting in a huddled knot away from the Decepticons, but Ratchet has apparently commandeered some of the Decepticon’s medical supplies. He’s making additional repairs to Soundwave’s arm, assisted by Bumblebee. Optimus sends Ultra Magnus to attend to the others, and heads over to Ratchet, but he has to stop and duck out of the way when Ratbat goes suddenly careening past him, cackling wildly. Optimus turns to watch him slap into the side of Megatron’s helmet and make himself comfortable there.

“What _is_ Ratbat’s function?” Optimus asks, when he sits down beside Ratchet. His logic unit has been evaluating possibilities since they were first introduced, but it hasn’t come up with a viable option yet. Ratbat’s size and strength class limit his usefulness in the majority of military applications, he has no apparent weapons systems or military-grade armor, and he’s clearly lacking the coordination required for sneaking and scouting.

“Function: efficient energon distribution and processing,” Soundwave says, eventually. “Additionally: discovery and evaluation of potential energon sources.”

“But that’s a civilian function,” Bumblebee protests.

“Affirmative.”

“Measure out a meter of the silicone-coated twelve-gauge wire for me,” Ratchet interrupts, still digging around in Soundwave’s arm.

“He doesn’t _act_ like a civilian,” Bumblebee argues, once he’s handed over the wiring. “He bites. And he keeps dive bombing us and laughing when we duck out of the way.”

“Ratbat: Decepticon,” Soundwave says. “Additionally, development ongoing.”

“Ratbat is still a newspark,” Ratchet translates, looking up from his work. His optics are flaring bright with amusement. “Once he accesses the Decepticon archives, his systems will be able to run a standard pattern recognition routine to establish initial behavioral protocols.”

“Yeah, I’m sure _that_ will really help,” Bumblebee mutters, sarcastic.

Ratchet snorts, conceding the point. Optimus can’t help but laugh himself, almost wonderingly. No one builds a civilian to fight a war; Soundwave could have chosen a military design meant to support internal weaponry and heavy armor, and simply built in a tactical coprocessor with the capacity to analyze energon patterns and usage as needed. But instead he’d chosen to build Ratbat, a ferocious little newspark, but also a civilian, a _liability_. 

Ratbat chooses that moment to come flying back over, the other cassettes in hot pursuit, and Ratchet closes up Soundwave’s arm for a moment.

Soundwave had been built as a slave—as a disposable. He was never meant to be loved, or to be capable of love himself. But now that Optimus has seen it, he can’t unsee it: Soundwave, sitting on the ground with Ravage beside him, a tiny, furious Ratbat chattering loudly on his shoulder, his other cassettes shrieking and wrestling and showing off for him—none of them are machines. He _does_ love them. And if Soundwave can love—if _Megatron_ can love—

Optimus briefly offlines his optical input, filled with a sudden rising hope, and an irrepressible love of his own. When he onlines his optics again he looks over at the others, terrified and confused but desperately attempting to honor the agreement he’s made for them, and then he looks back down at Ratchet and Bumblebee, who have been bravely attempting to make friends with their lifelong enemies while Optimus negotiates on their behalf. He squeezes Ratchet suddenly close, ignoring his grumbled protests.

Ratbat takes off again, chased this time by Laserbeak and Buzzsaw, and Optimus finally has a vision of his own: a new generation of Cybertronians, rising from the wreckage they’ve made of their world, designed for no one’s purposes but their own.

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to hopeamy, who was very patient with me while I wrote this. I hope all of you enjoyed the story and her beautiful art! This was my first big bang and it was a joy to participate. Please let us know what you thought--all feedback is loved and appreciated!


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